literal

programming A constant made available to a process, by

inclusion in the executable text. Most modern systems do not

allow texts to modify themselves during execution, so literals

are indeed constant; their value is written at compile-time

and is read-only at run time.

In contrast, values placed in variables or files and accessed

by the process via a symbolic name, can be changed during

execution. This may be an asset. For example, messages can

be given in a choice of languages by placing the translation

in a file.

Literals are used when such modification is not desired. The

name of the file mentioned above (not its content), or a

physical constant such as 3.14159, might be coded as a

literal. Literals can be accessed quickly, a potential

advantage of their use.

(1996-01-23)