Character text constants can be specified in either of the following formats:
- Double-quoted format
- Single-quoted format
Double-quoted format contains printable characters and the Hex representation of one byte of text.
| [repeat * ] | { "a"} {X"xx"} |
where
| a | = | any printable character. To include a double-quote character in a string, include two double quotes. |
| xx | = | the Hex representation of one byte of text. Hex text constants are not associated with any encoding. |
| repeat | the number of times the characters between double quotes is repeated to produce the string. For example, 2 * "ABC" is equivalent to "ABCABC"; 3 * X"FF" is equivalent to X"FFFFFF". |
Single-quoted format
Single-quoted format contains printable characters and characters in escaped notation.
| [U] | 'c…' |
where
| U | a string encoded in UTF-8. Specify U to treat the literal as a Unicode literal before processing. | |
| c | = | {a } {escaped_character} {\subfield_number } |
| a | = | any printable character. To include a single quotation mark or a backslash in a string, precede the character with a backslash. |
| escaped_character | {\t} {\v} {\b} {\n} {\r} {\f} {\'} {\\} \t - horizontal tab \v -vertical tab \b - backspace \n - newline \r - carriage return \f - form feed \’ - single quotation mark \\ - backslash | |
| subfield_number | the number of a sub-field defined by a parenthesized portion of a pattern. The maximum sub-field number is 9. See Extract function in the Connect ETL functions reference section of the Connect help. |
Consider the following examples:
| "sample" | string of 6 characters | |
| X"73616D706C65" | = | string of 6 characters equivalent to sample |
| 2 * "sam" | = | string of 6 characters equivalent to samsam |
| 'sample' | string of 6 characters | |
| 'sam\tple' | string with sam separated from ple with a tab | |
| U'sam' | string of 3 UTF-8 encoded characters equivalent to sam |
At runtime, single and double-quoted character text constants are treated as locale encoded. If a task is saved in locale encoding, text constants remain in locale at run-time. No encoding conversion is performed. If, however, a task is saved in Unicode encoding, single and double-quoted text constants are converted from Unicode to locale at run-time.
Single-quoted character text constants that are prefixed with ‘U’ and that serve as arguments in Unicode-encoded Connect ETL task file options are treated as Unicode encoded.
Note: A Unicode-encoded Connect ETL task file must have all of its options completely encoded in Unicode. A locale-encoded Connect ETL task file must have all of its options completely encoded in locale.