String literals consist of a sequence of zero or more ASCII characters or escape sequences surrounded by double quotation mark (").
String literals can be typed in multiple lines as shown here:
s="abc""def" \
"ghi"
which is same as s="abcdefhi". '\' is the continuation character which allows.
If the 'L' suffix is added to the string literal, the result is a BString (Unicode). The conversion takes place after the ASCII string is scanned. Thus the \xhhh escape sequences can only represent 8 bits of data, not 16. Unicode characters which do not have a single byte ASCII representation need to be specified by a Multi-Byte Sequence as defined by Microsoft.
An escape sequence represents a single character (one byte), and can be any of the following:
|
Escape Sequence |
Character Name |
Value |
|
\a |
Bell |
7 |
|
\b |
Backspace |
8 |
|
\f |
Form feed |
12 |
|
\n |
Newline (Line feed) |
10 or 0xa |
|
\r |
Carriage return |
13 or 0xd |
|
\t |
Horizontal tab |
9 |
|
\v |
Vertical tab |
11 |
|
\' |
Single quotation mark |
39 or 027 |
|
\" |
Double quotation mark |
34 or 022 |
|
\\ |
Backslash |
92 or 05c |
|
\xhhh |
Hexadecimal number |
\xhhh (i.e. "\x04A" same as "J" or "\x00A same as "\n") |
|
\c where c is any character not found above |
Character or numeral |
That character, for example, the letter c. |
For more information on escape sequences, see Escape Sequences for Literals.
"string" [optional suffix]
The syntax has the following parts:
|
Name |
Type |
Description |
|
string |
string constant |
A sequence of zero or more ASCII characters or escape sequences surrounded by double quotation mark ("). |
|
suffix |
suffix |
The letter "L". |
In ATEasy, the convention for naming string variables is to prefix the variable name with an 's' or 'bs', for example, sStringVar.
The following are two examples of string literals:
"First line\r\nSecond Line\r\n"
"Surrounded by carriage return and line feed\x00D\x00A"