Constants and Expressions

Constants

The Recital/4GL supports the following constants:

Datatype	Description
Character	A string of ASCII characters up to 8191 characters in length. Delimited by double quotes "", single quotes ’’ or square brackets []
Numeric	An integer number of up to 16 digits (0-9) or a floating point number of up to 25 digits (9 are reserved for decimal places) and one decimal point.
Date	A combination of digits and separators delimited by curly braces {}. The format is determined by the SET DATE and SET CENTURY commands.
Logical	A choice of two values, .T. for true, .F. for false

Hexadecimal numbers

Hexadecimal numbers, prefixed by 0x, can be used in place of decimal numbers except in the data entry/modification of numerics. (Linux platforms only).

? BITAND(0x67452301,0xFFFFFFFF)

Results of expressions will still be returned as decimal numbers.

? 0x1a * 2
        52

The TRANSFORM() function can be used to return a numeric as a hexadecimal.

? transform((0x1a * 2),"@0")
0x00000034

Expressions

The TYPE() function can be used to determine the data type of any expression.

uMemvar	TYPE("uMemvar")	Type
[hello]	’C’	Character
’goodbye’	’C’	Character
"RECITAL"	’C’	Character
1234	’N’	Numeric
1234.56	’N’	Numeric
"1234.56"	’C’	Character
0x2b	’N’	Numeric
{01/01/96}	’D’	Date
{01/01/1996}	’D’	Date
"01/01/96"	’C’	Character
.T.	’L’	Logical
.F.	’L’	Logical
opentags	’P’	Procedure
OMyObj	’O’	Object
Undetermined Type	’U’	Undefined