Delimiter

A delimiter delineates parts of a statement, command, or data.

System delimiters include the four special metacharacters reserved for use by the Pick Data Model:

  • Attribute marks

  • Value marks

  • Subvalue marks

  • Segment marks

AQL and FlashBASIC both use single quotation marks (’), double quotation marks ("), and backslashes (\) as string delimiters, marking the beginning and ending point of a literal string.

Data itself can be delimited by any nonreserved delimiters mentioned above, such as an * (asterisk) or a - (minus sign).

Note: The use of null item-IDs should be avoided. The use of null item-IDs can cause system processors that are dependent on spaces as delimiters to not recognize a null item-ID surrounded by a space, since it would appear to be just two spaces and considered a delimiter.