a. | 1. | According to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical; | ||||||
2. | Following the letter or exact words; not free. | |||||||
3. | Consisting of, or expressed by, letters. | |||||||
4. | Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of-fact; - applied to persons.
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n. | 1. | Literal meaning. |
(programming) | literal - 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. |