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literal
(redirected from literals)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia 0.06 sec.

In programming, any data typed in by the programmer that remains unchanged when translated into machine language. Examples are a constant value used for calculation purposes as well as text messages displayed on screen. In the following lines of code, the literals are 1 and VALUE IS ONE.

     if x = 1
       print "the value is one"
     endif


(programming)literal - A constant made available to a process, by inclusion in the executable text. Most modern systems do not allow texts to modify themselves during execution, so literals are indeed constant; their value is written at compile-time and is read-only at run time.

In contrast, values placed in variables or files and accessed by the process via a symbolic name, can be changed during execution. This may be an asset. For example, messages can be given in a choice of languages by placing the translation in a file.

Literals are used when such modification is not desired. The name of the file mentioned above (not its content), or a physical constant such as 3.14159, might be coded as a literal. Literals can be accessed quickly, a potential advantage of their use.

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Hurricane Editor supports over 45 file types, providing fully customizable syntax highlighting to distinguish elements such as variables, literals, comments, and primitives within source code quickly.
Apart from the distressing number of literals and homophones which infest my proof copy, my main criticism is that Jose Manser never quite succeeds in bringing her quicksilver subject into full view.
Admittedly, there were a certain number of errors and literals in the first edition (I am assured that corrections have been made in the second), but this is surely not sufficient reason for dismissing a work of great originality without even discussing its leading ideas or the novelty of its method.
 
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