Strings

Strings are of the following types:

literal strings
expressions with CHAR or VARCHAR data types.

An expression with a CHAR data type may be a built-in or user-defined function, or one of the many other kinds of expressions available.

For more information on expressions, see “Expressions”.

A literal string is any sequence of characters enclosed in apostrophes ('single quotes'). A SQL variable of character data type can hold a string. The following is a simple example of a literal strings:

'This is a string.'

Special characters in strings

You represent special characters in strings by escape sequences, as follows:

To represent an apostrophe inside a string, use two apostrophes in a row. For example:
```
'John''s database'
```
To represent a new line character, use a backslash followed by n (\n). For example:
```
'First line:\nSecond line:'
```
To represent a backslash character, use two backslashes in a row (\\). For example:
```
'c:\\temp'
```
Hexadecimal escape sequences can be used for any character, printable or not. A hexadecimal escape sequence is a backslash followed by an x followed by two hexadecimal digits (for example, \x6d represents the letter m). For example:
```
'\x00\x01\x02\x03'
```

Compatibility

For compatibility with Adaptive Server Enterprise, you can set the QUOTED_IDENTIFIER database option to OFF. With this setting, you can also use double quotes to mark the beginning and end of strings. The option is set to ON by default.