Specifies a literal character-string value.

Syntax

"characters" [ : [ R | L | C | T ][ U ] [ max-length ] ]
characters
The literal contents of the character string.
R | L | C | T
Specifies the justification of the string within its maximum length: right, left, centered, or trimmed, respectively. The default justification depends on how the string is used. If the string is displayed with side labels, the default is right justification. If column labels are used, the defaults are left justification for character fields and right justification for numeric fields. Strings used in expressions are trimmed by default.
  • R means right justified and padded on the left with spaces: "Hello":R10 = " Hello".
  • L means left justified and padded on the right with spaces: "Hello":L10 = "Hello ".
  • C means centered within the string and padded on both the right and left as needed: "Hello":C10 = " Hello ".
  • T means trimmed of leading and trailing blanks (although storage space and screen space is still allocated for the maximum number of characters): " Hello":T10 = "Hello" (but screen and storage space is still reserved for 10 characters).
U
Specifies that the string is untranslatable. If you do not specify U, then the string is assumed to be translatable, unless the DEFAULT-UNTRANSLATABLE option of the COMPILE statement or the Default Untranslatable (-defuntrans) startup parameter (for a session) is used.
max-length
The number of characters reserved for the string contents in the text segment. The default is the length of the string itself. You might want to specify a longer length if you expect a translation of the string to be longer. The longest length you can specify is 5120 characters.

Note

If you include the colon (:) after the quoted string, you must supply at least one option. Otherwise, ABL treats the colon as a statement separator.