A printing character is assumed to have a unique integer representation within the computer, dependent on some hardware or software convention. The integer value may be referred to within the program by the LITERAL operator. For example,
has an integer value uniquely representative of "a". The form is included within the syntax of integer (Section 10.2). The printing characters will be implementation-dependent, but it must be assumed that the set includes one 26-letter alphabet and a set of 10 digits (see Appendix B). Layout characters are not acceptable as arguments to LITERAL.