String Literals

A string literal specifies a character string value.

Syntax

[r]('char*'|"char*")

char is a character drawn from the supported character set.

• Use \ to escape special characters.
• Use \uXXXX or \Uxxxxxxxx to represent Unicode characters, where XXXX and xxxxxxxx are 16-bit and 32-bit code points in hexadecimal respectively. For example, \u03C0 → π, \U0001F44B → 👋.
• Use an octal number preceded by \ to represent an ASCII character. For example, \142 → b.

r (case-insensitive) is an optional prefix that indicates a raw string literal. If a string literal starts with the r prefix, neither special characters nor Unicode characters are escaped by \.

The following escape sequences are recognized in regular string literals without the r prefix, and replaced according to the following rules:

• \0->\u0000 (null)
• \b->\u0008 (backspace)
• \n->\u000a (line feed)
• \r->\u000d (carriage return)
• \t->\u0009 (horizontal tab)
• \Z->\u001A (substitute)
• \%->\% (percent sign)
• \_->\_ (underscore)

For \c where c is any other character, the backslash \ is simply removed and the character is left as is.

Examples

SELECT 'Hello, World!' AS col;
-- +-------------+
-- |          col|
-- +-------------+
-- |Hello, World!|
-- +-------------+

SELECT "Sail" AS col;
-- +----+
-- | col|
-- +----+
-- |Sail|
-- +----+

SELECT 'It\'s about $25.' AS col;
-- +---------------+
-- |            col|
-- +---------------+
-- |It's about $25.|
-- +---------------+

SELECT r"'\n' represents a newline character." AS col;
-- +------------------------------------+
-- |                                 col|
-- +------------------------------------+
-- |'\n' represents a newline character.|
-- +------------------------------------+