Specifying Quoted Strings

You use quoted strings in a variety of SQL statements, particularly data manipulation statements such as SELECT and INSERT. A quoted string is a string of consecutive characters that is delimited by quotation marks. The quotation marks can be single quotes or double quotes. If the DELIMIDENT environment variable is set, however, the database server interprets a string of characters in double quotes as a delimited identifier rather than as a string. For more information about delimited identifiers, see Non-ASCII Characters in Identifiers.

When you use a nondefault locale, you can use any characters in the code set of your locale within a quoted string. If the locale supports a code set with non-ASCII characters, you can use these characters in a quoted string. In the following example, the user inserts column values that include multibyte characters in the table mytable:

INSERT INTO mytable
   VALUES ('A1A2B1B2abcd', '123X1X2Y1Y2', 'efgh')

In this example, the first quoted string includes the multibyte characters A¹A² and B¹B². The second quoted string includes the multibyte characters X¹X² and Y¹Y². The third quoted string contains only single-byte characters. This example assumes that the locale supports a multibyte code set with the A¹A², B¹B², X¹X², and Y¹Y² characters.

For a description of quoted strings, see the Quoted String segment in the IBM Informix: Guide to SQL Syntax.