A literal is a textual representation of a particular value of a data type.
Visual Basic supplies a set of literal type characters, which you can use to force a literal to assume a data type other than the one its form indicates. You do this by appending the character to the end of the literal. The following table shows the available literal type characters with examples of usage.
No literal type characters exist for the Boolean, Byte, Date, Object, SByte, or String data types, or for any composite data types such as arrays or structures.
Literals can also use the identifier type characters (%, &, @, !, #, $), as can variables, constants, and expressions. However, the literal type characters (S, I, L, D, F, R, C) can be used only with literals.
In all cases, the literal type character must immediately follow the literal value.
In addition, we need to enclose string literals
within two quotations and date and time literals within two # sign. Strings can
contain any characters, including numbers. The following are few examples:
memberName="Turban, John."
TelNumber="1800-900-888-777"
LastDay=#31-Dec-00#
ExpTime=#12:00 am#
A character literal is entered using a single character string suffixed with a
Visual Basic supplies a set of literal type characters, which you can use to force a literal to assume a data type other than the one its form indicates. You do this by appending the character to the end of the literal. The following table shows the available literal type characters with examples of usage.
| Literal type character | Data type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| S | Short | I = 347S |
| I | Integer | J = 347I |
| L | Long | K = 347L |
| D | Decimal | X = 347D |
| F | Single | Y = 347F |
| R | Double | Z = 347R |
| US | UShort | L = 347US |
| UI | UInteger | M = 347UI |
| UL | ULong | N = 347UL |
| C | Char | Q = "."C |
Literals can also use the identifier type characters (%, &, @, !, #, $), as can variables, constants, and expressions. However, the literal type characters (S, I, L, D, F, R, C) can be used only with literals.
In all cases, the literal type character must immediately follow the literal value.
Literals are values that you assign to data. In
some cases, we need to add a suffix behind a literal so that VB can handle the
calculation more accurately. For example, we can use num=1.3089# for a Double
type data.Literals can also use the identifier type characters (%, &, @, !, #, $), as can variables, constants, and expressions
Suffix
|
Data Type
|
&
|
Long
|
!
|
Single
|
#
|
Double
|
@
|
Currency
|
memberName="Turban, John."
TelNumber="1800-900-888-777"
LastDay=#31-Dec-00#
ExpTime=#12:00 am#
A character literal is entered using a single character string suffixed with a
C.Dim theLetterA As Char = "A"C
|
