# Literals [Home](/rezoom-sql/master.md) > [Language](/rezoom-sql/language.md) > Literals [← Data types](/rezoom-sql/language/datatypes.md) | [Expressions →](/rezoom-sql/language/expr.md) ## Literals A **literal** is the source code representation of a value. Different [data types](/rezoom-sql/language/datatypes.md) typically have different literal representations. Examples of literals in F# code include: ```fsharp "string literals" 123 // integer literals 3.1415 // floating point literals ``` Examples of literals in RZSQL include: ```sql null true false 0x100 256 3.1415 'string literals' ``` This is the complete syntax for literals: #### *literal* ![](/files/otE8kLKr7lB5PCJPGXKR) Most of this is standard fare for programming languages. However, make note of the following quirks: * Binary literals are the same as string literals except that they are prefixed with an `x` and can only contain pairs of hexadecimal digits between the quotes. An example of a binary literal is `x'DEADBEEF'`. * There is no provision for escaping arbitrary characters in string literals. Single quotes can be escaped by doubling them within the string, but there is no backslash syntax to encode control characters like `'\n'`. * RZSQL has literals for true and false. This is extremely common in programming languages at large, but slightly less common among SQL dialects. For instance, neither SQL Server nor SQLite have boolean literals (the former has no boolean data type at all, and the latter uses integers to represent booleans). RZSQL automatically translates these to the appropriate backend representation. * RZSQL has literals for date and time values. Essentially these just understand the [ISO 8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) format. An example of a `DATETIMEOFFSET` literal is `2017-03-30T00:32:57-04:00`. *** [← Data types](/rezoom-sql/language/datatypes.md) | [Expressions →](/rezoom-sql/language/expr.md) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://humbobst.gitbook.io/rezoom-sql/language/literal.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.