literalkonstants

Literalkonstants, often simply called literals, are fixed values that appear directly in source code. They represent concrete data such as numbers, characters, or strings, and are not represented by variables or expressions. When the source code is compiled or interpreted, these literals are assigned their specific values.

There are several common types of literals. Numeric literals include integers, like 10 or -5, and floating-point numbers, such as 3.14 or -0.001. String literals are sequences of characters enclosed in quotation marks, for example, "hello world" or 'example'. Character literals are single characters enclosed in single quotes, like 'a' or '$'. Boolean literals represent true or false values, typically written as true and false.

Literals are fundamental building blocks in programming. They allow developers to embed constant data directly into their programs without needing to declare separate variables for each fixed value. This simplifies code and makes it more readable, especially when dealing with commonly used or self-explanatory values. For instance, using the literal 100 directly in a calculation is often clearer than declaring a variable named MAX_USERS and setting it to 100, if that value is only used once and its meaning is obvious from context.

The specific syntax for literals can vary slightly between programming languages. However, the core concept of representing fixed values directly in code remains consistent across most programming paradigms.