The simplest way to specify a value is with a literal. A literal
       is either a character string enclosed in quotation marks or a
       number.

1  –  Character String Literals

       A character string literal is a string of printing characters
       up to 253 characters long. The maximum size for an input line
       in DEC DATATRIEVE is 255 characters, but in character string
       literals, two of those characters are used for the quotation
       marks. The printing characters consist of the uppercase and
       lowercase letters, numbers, and the following special characters:

       ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ = + ` [

       { ] } ~ ; : ' " \ | , < . > / ?

       To type a literal on more than one line, enter a hyphen
       immediately before pressing the RETURN key. DEC DATATRIEVE strips
       the hyphen from that part of the character string literal and
       waits for you to complete the literal by typing the closing
       quotation mark. As long as the total number of characters in
       the literal does not exceed 253, you can use any number of
       continuation characters between the quotation marks.

       Although DEC DATATRIEVE usually converts all lowercase letters
       of your input to uppercase, it preserves lowercase letters in
       character string literals. Because the case of the character
       string literals is preserved, comparisons using these literals
       are case sensitive.

2  –  Numeric Literals

       A numeric literal is a string of digits that DEC DATATRIEVE
       interprets as a decimal number. A numeric literal may contain a
       decimal point and up to 31 digits. The decimal point is optional
       and is not counted in the maximum number of digits.

       A numeric literal can begin with a decimal point. Thus, for
       example, .5 is a valid numeric literal.

       A numeric literal cannot end with a decimal point. For example,
       123. is not a valid numeric, but 123.0 is.

       If you use a numeric literal to assign a value to a field or a
       variable, the data type of the field or variable controls the
       maximum value you can assign.