Editing String literal (section)

=== Declarative notation ===

In the original [[FORTRAN]] programming language (for example), string literals were written in so-called [[Hollerith constant|''Hollerith'' notation]], where a decimal count of the number of characters was followed by the letter H, and then the characters of the string:

  <syntaxhighlight lang="fortran">35HAn example Hollerith string literal</syntaxhighlight>

This declarative notation style is contrasted with bracketed [[delimiter]] quoting, because it does
not require the use of balanced "bracketed" characters on either side of the string.

'''Advantages:'''
* eliminates text searching (for the delimiter character) and therefore requires significantly less [[Computational overhead|overhead]]
* avoids the problem of [[delimiter collision]]
* enables the inclusion of [[metacharacter]]s that might otherwise be mistaken as commands
* can be used for quite effective data compression of plain text strings{{citation needed|reason=doesn't look like compression to me|date=March 2011}}

'''Drawbacks:'''
* this type of notation is error-prone if used as manual entry by [[programmer]]s
* special care is needed in case of multi byte encodings
This is however not a drawback when the prefix is generated by an algorithm as is most likely the case.{{citation needed|reason=humans don't generally write Fortran code, or what? we're talking source code formats, after all...|date=February 2012}}