Notes on Security Statement Syntax › Resource Identifiers › Delimited Identifiers

Delimited Identifiers

Why Delimit Identifiers

You delimit an identifier in double quotation marks to do the following:

• Allow the use of special characters and blanks. An identifier enclosed in quotation marks can consist of any combination of characters. For example, this is a valid identifier:

  "&ATM*F(0517). MA"
  

  To include a double quotation mark as part of the identifier itself, use two consecutive double quotation marks. For example:

  "M1K""L9&ZZ".
  

• Make case significant. When you enclose an identifier in quotation marks, CA IDMS does not convert lowercase letters to uppercase.

  Lowercase letters in quotation marks are not equal to uppercase letters or to lowercase letters that are not in quotation marks. In the following example, the identifiers on the left all identify the same table; the identifier on the right identifies a different table:

  employee               "employee"
  EMPLOYEE
  "EMPLOYEE"
  

Placement of Quotation Marks

If one or more parts of a qualified identifier require quotation marks, place the quotation marks only around the individual parts. Do not include two identifiers in one set of quotation marks. For example, both parts of the following qualified identifier require quotation marks:

"temp-tab-1"."Commission to Date"

When you calculate the length of an identifier, do not include delimiting quotation marks.

Note: The delimiter rules also apply to passwords using special characters or blanks even though passwords are not delimiters.