String literals can be enclosed in either single quotation marks or double quotation marks. You can use either form to make quotations in strings easier:
Examples:
"Hello World!"
"He said ’Hello World!’"
’He said "Hello World!"’
You can use the \uxxxx Unicode escape where xxxx is a four digit hexadecimal Unicode code point value. To represent the backslash character \, you must represent it as two backslashes \\.
Strings enclosed in double quotation marks, but not single quotation marks, can also use other backslash encoded values:
\" means the double quote character itself
\r means carriage return
\n means a newline character
\t means a tab character
\b means a backspace character
The following literals represent the Boolean values of TRUE and FALSE respectively:
TRUE
FALSE
These literals are not case-sensitive. For example, the literals TRUE, true, True, and TrUe mean the same thing.
Numeric literals support Integer, Long, BigInteger, BigDecimal, Float, and Double types.
Integral numeric literals, without a decimal point, that start with a 0 are treated as octal numbers. Integral numeric literals that start with either 0x or 0X are treated as hexadecimal numbers. Those that start with non-zero digits are treated as decimal numbers. Decimal, octal, and hexadecimal integral literals can have an integral suffix (G,L,I). Integral numeric literals without a suffix are the smallest type into which the value fits (Integer, Long, or BigInteger).
Numeric literals with decimal points are treated as java.math.BigDecimal types rather than binary floating point types (Float, Double). To specify Float and Double types, use a suffix of F and D respectively. Exponential notation is supported for decimal types (BigDecimal, Double Float) with or without a signed exponent.
Literal | Type | Value (decimal) |
---|---|---|
123 | Integer | 123 |
077 | Integer | 127 |
0xFF | Integer | 255 |
2147483648 | Long | 2147483648 |
123L | Long | 123 |
9999999999 | BigDecimal | 9999999999 |
1.200065D | Double | 1.200065 |
1.234F | Float | 1.234 |
1.23E23D | Double | 1.23E23 |
This description is intended to be a summary only. Numeric literals are described in more detail at http://groovy.codehaus.org/Groovy+Math.