Characters
A character is a single Unicode element enclosed within quotes U+0022 (") with the exception of U+0022 itself, which must be escaped by a preceding U+005C character (\).
var aCharacter: chr = "z\n"
var anotherOne: str = "語\n"
Raw characters
Raw character literals do not process any escapes. They are enclosed within single-quotes U+0027 (') with the exception of U+0027 itself:
var aCharacter: chr = 'z'
Strings
A string is a single or a sequence of Unicode elements enclosed within quotes U+0022 (") with the exception of U+0022 itself, which must be escaped by a preceding U+005C character (\).
var hiInEnglish: str = "Hello, world!\n"
var hInCantonese: str = "日本語"
Line-breaks are allowed in strings. A line-break is either a newline (U+000A) or a pair of carriage return and newline (U+000D, U+000A). Both byte sequences are normally translated to U+000A, but as a special exception, when an unescaped U+005C character (\ occurs immediately before the line-break, the U+005C character, the line-break, and all whitespace at the beginning of the next line are ignored. Thus a and b are equal:
var a: str = "foobar";
var b: str = "foo\
bar";
assert(a,b);
Escape sequences
Some additional escapes are available in either character or non-raw string literals.
| code | description |
|---|---|
| \p | platform specific newline: CRLF on Windows, LF on Unix |
| \r, \c | carriage return |
| \n, \l | line feed (often called newline) |
| \f | form feed |
| \t | tabulator |
| \v | vertical tabulator |
| \\ | backslash |
| \" | quotation mark |
| \' | apostrophe |
| \ ‘0’..‘9’+ | character with decimal value d; all decimal digits directly following are used for the character |
| \a | alert |
| \b | backspace |
| \e | escape [ESC] |
| \x HH | character with hex value HH; exactly two hex digits are allowed |
| \u HHHH | unicode codepoint with hex value HHHH; exactly four hex digits are allowed |
| \u {H+} | unicode codepoint; all hex digits enclosed in {} are used for the codepoint |
Raw strings
Just like raw characters, raw string literals do not process any escapes either. They are enclosed within single-quotes U+0027 (') with the exception of U+0027 itself:
var hiInEnglish: str = 'Hello, world!'
Booleans
The two values of the boolean type are written true and false:
var isPresent: bol = false;