Literals

The quickest way to include values of a particular data type in your Visual Basic code is to use a literal. You've already seen literals in action in this book. Chapter 1 included a literal in its sample project.

MsgBox("Hello, World!") 

This call to the MsgBox function includes a String literal. String literals always appear within a set of double quotes. Most numeric literals appear with a data-type-defining character on the end of the literal, but there are other variations. Table 6-6 lists the different literals values you can include in your code.

Table 6-6. Literals Supported by Visual Basic

Literal Type	Example	Description
Boolean	true	The Boolean data type supports two literal values: True and False.
Char	"Q"c	Single-character literals appear in double quotes with a trailing character c. A literal of type Char is not the same as a single-character literal of type String.
Date	#11/7/2005#	Date or time literals appear between a set of number signs. You can include dates, times, or a combination of both. The date or time values can be in any format recognized by Windows, although Visual Studio may reformat your date literal for conformity with its own standards.
Decimal	123.45D 123.45@	Floating point values of type Decimal are followed by a capital D, or the character @.
Double	123.45R 123.45#	Floating point values of type Double are followed by a capital R, or the character #. Also, if you use a numeric literal with a decimal portion, but with no trailing data type character, that literal will be typed as a Double.
Hexadecimal	&HABCD	You can include hexadecimal literals in your code by starting the value with the "&H" character sequence, followed by the hex digits.
Integer	123.45I 123.45%	Integral values of type Integer are followed by a capital I, or the character %. Also, if you use a numeric literal that falls in the range of an Integer, but with no trailing data type character, that literal will be typed as an Integer.
Long	123.45L 123.45&	Integral values of type Long are followed by a capital L, or the character &. Also, if you use a numeric literal that falls in the range of a Long and outside the range of an Integer, but with no trailing data type character, that literal will be typed as a Long.
Octal	&O7654	You can include octal literals in your code by starting the value with the "&O" character sequence, followed by the octal digits.
Short	123.45S	Integral values of type Short are followed by a capital S.
Single	123.45F 123.45!	Floating point values of type Single are followed by a capital F, or the character !.
String	"Simple" "A ""B"" C"	String literals appear within a set of double quotes, with no special character following the closing quote. Use two quote characters within the string literal to embed a single quotation mark.