String delimiters

String literals need to be delimited by specific characters.

In the Genero BDL language, string literals are delimited by single quote ('), double quote (") or back quote (`) characters:

'My character string'
"My character string"
`My character string`

Do not mix quote as delimiters of the same string. The following is not a valid character string:

'This is not a valid character string"

To include literal quotation marks within a character string, precede each quotation mark with the backslash (\), or else enclose the string between a pair of quotes that :

'Type \'Y\' to accept changes.'
"Type 'Y' to accept changes."
'Type "Y" to accept changes.'

Use the back quotes, to write the string literal as raw text, without interpretation of the backslash escape character. In the next example, the string literal will contain 4 characters: a backslash, the letter n, another backslash, and the letter r. With single or double quotes delimiters, \n represents a newline and \r a carriage-return:

`\n\r`

A string literal can be written on multiple lines. The compiler merges lines by removing the newline character.

In the SQL language, the standard specifications recommend that you use single quotes for string literals and double quotes for database object identifiers like table or column names. When accessing a non-Informix database, double quotation marks might not be recognized as database object name delimiters. As a general rule, use single quoted string literals in SQL statements, and use non-quoted, lowercase database object identifiers.