[lit-er-uh
l] 
| 1. | in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical: the literal meaning of a word. |
| 2. | following the words of the original very closely and exactly: a literal translation of Goethe. |
| 3. | true to fact; not exaggerated; actual or factual: a literal description of conditions. |
| 4. | being actually such, without exaggeration or inaccuracy: the literal extermination of a city. |
| 5. | (of persons) tending to construe words in the strict sense or in an unimaginative way; matter-of-fact; prosaic. |
| 6. | of or pertaining to the letters of the alphabet. |
| 7. | of the nature of letters. |
| 8. | expressed by letters. |
| 9. | affecting a letter or letters: a literal error. |
| 10. | a typographical error, esp. involving a single letter. |
| lit·er·al (lĭt'ər-əl) adj.
A letter or symbol that stands for itself as opposed to a feature, function, or entity associated with it in a programming language: $ can be a symbol that refers to the end of a line, but as a literal, it is a dollar sign. [Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin litterālis, of letters, from Latin littera, lītera, letter; see letter.] lit'er·al·ness n. |
literal programming
A constant made available to a process, by inclusion in the executable text. Most modern systems do not allow texts to modify themselves during execution, so literals are indeed constant; their value is written at compile-time and is read-only at run time.
In contrast, values placed in variables or files and accessed by the process via a symbolic name, can be changed during execution. This may be an asset. For example, messages can be given in a choice of languages by placing the translation in a file.
Literals are used when such modification is not desired. The name of the file mentioned above (not its content), or a physical constant such as 3.14159, might be coded as a literal. Literals can be accessed quickly, a potential advantage of their use.
(1996-01-23)