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Literals
Example The numeric strings in the following example are all valid:
204
Syntax
[ + | - ] { [ 0-9 ] [ 0-9 ] ... }
[ . [ 0-9 ] [ 0-9 ] ... ]
[ { E | e } [ + | - ][ 0-9 ] { [ 0-9 ] } ]
123
123.456
-123.456
12.34E-04
Character-string literals
A character-string literal is a string of characters enclosed in single quotation marks ( ' '). To
include a single quotation mark in a character-string literal, precede it with an additional single
quotation mark.
The INSERT statements in the following example show embedding quotation marks in
character-string literals:
insert into quote values('unquoted literal');
insert into quote values('''single-quoted literal''');
insert into quote values('"double-quoted literal"');
insert into quote values('O''Hare');select * from quote;
c1
-unquoted
literal
'single-quoted literal'
"double-quoted literal"
O’Hare
4 records selected
A character string literal can contain multi-byte characters in the character set used by the SQL
client. Only single-byte ASCII-encoded quote marks are valid in the syntax.
Date-time literals
SQL supports special formats for literals to be used in conjunction with date-time data types.
Basic predicates and the VALUES clause of INSERT statements can specify date literals directly
for comparison and insertion into tables. In other cases, you need to convert date literals to the
appropriate date-time data type with the CAST, CONVERT, or TO_DATE scalar functions.
Enclose date-time literals in single quotation marks ( ' ' ).
Notes • All text (names of days, months, ordinal number endings) in all date-format literals must
be in the English language. The default date format is American. You can explicitly
request another date format by using a format string.