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literal-prefixes-and-suffixes.md

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title Literal Prefixes and Suffixes | Microsoft Docs
ms.custom
ms.date 01/19/2017
ms.prod sql
ms.prod_service connectivity
ms.reviewer
ms.technology connectivity
ms.topic conceptual
helpviewer_keywords
SQL statements [ODBC], interoperability
interoperability of SQL statements [ODBC], literal prefixes and suffixes
literals [ODBC], prefixes and suffixes
ms.assetid 29f468f2-f557-4a92-b31d-569c63cc6272
author David-Engel
ms.author v-daenge

Literal Prefixes and Suffixes

In an SQL statement, a literal is a character representation of an actual data value. For example, in the following statement, ABC, FFFF, and 10 are literals:

SELECT CharCol, BinaryCol, IntegerCol FROM MyTable  
   WHERE CharCol = 'ABC' AND BinaryCol = 0xFFFF AND IntegerCol = 10

Literals for some data types require special prefixes and suffixes. In the preceding example, the character literal (ABC) requires a single quotation mark (') as both a prefix and a suffix, the binary literal (FFFF) requires the characters 0x as a prefix, and the integer literal (10) does not require a prefix or suffix.

For all data types except date, time, and timestamps, interoperable applications should use the values returned in the LITERAL_PREFIX and LITERAL_SUFFIX columns in the result set created by SQLGetTypeInfo. For date, time, timestamp, and datetime interval literals, interoperable applications should use the escape sequences discussed in the preceding section.