Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art

PROCESSING: CREATIVE CODING AND COMPUTATIONAL ART
64
Literals
As you will learn in the next section, a variable is something that can mean different things
in different parts of the program. However, a literal is simply an explicit number or string
constant (words or characters) used in programs. Here are some examples:
"Sophie"
25
10346
"abc"
Note that string literals are enclosed in quotes (usually double quotes) and numeric literals
are not. In some cases, if you need a string within a string, you surround the inner string
with single quotes. Here’s an example:
"One of Shakespeare's most famous lines 'to be or not to be'
is in Hamlet"
Here’s a sketch that outputs some literal values:
String announceDate = "I'm writing this on: ";
String currentMonth = "March ";
int currentDay = 5;
String currentDayName = "Sunday";
int currentYear = 2006;
String comma = ", ";
print(announceDate);
println(currentDayName);
print(currentMonth);
print(currentDay);
print(comma);
println(currentYear);
This sketch will output the following:
I'm writing this on: Sunday
March 5, 2006
Notice how I used the print() and println() statements to help me format the outputted
lines combining the literals.