layout: global title: Literals displayTitle: Literals license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

A literal (also known as a constant) represents a fixed data value. Spark SQL supports the following literals:

String Literal

A string literal is used to specify a character string value.

Syntax

'char [ ... ]' | "char [ ... ]"

Parameters

  • char

    One character from the character set. Use \ to escape special characters (e.g., ' or \). To represent unicode characters, use 16-bit or 32-bit unicode escape of the form \uxxxx or \Uxxxxxxxx, where xxxx and xxxxxxxx are 16-bit and 32-bit code points in hexadecimal respectively (e.g., \u3042 for あ and \U0001F44D for 👍).

Examples

SELECT 'Hello, World!' AS col;
+-------------+
|          col|
+-------------+
|Hello, World!|
+-------------+

SELECT "SPARK SQL" AS col;
+---------+
|      col|
+---------+
|Spark SQL|
+---------+

SELECT 'it\'s $10.' AS col;
+---------+
|      col|
+---------+
|It's $10.|
+---------+

Binary Literal

A binary literal is used to specify a byte sequence value.

Syntax

X { 'num [ ... ]' | "num [ ... ]" }

Parameters

  • num

    Any hexadecimal number from 0 to F.

Examples

SELECT X'123456' AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|[12 34 56]|
+----------+

Null Literal

A null literal is used to specify a null value.

Syntax

NULL

Examples

SELECT NULL AS col;
+----+
| col|
+----+
|NULL|
+----+

Boolean Literal

A boolean literal is used to specify a boolean value.

Syntax

TRUE | FALSE

Examples

SELECT TRUE AS col;
+----+
| col|
+----+
|true|
+----+

Numeric Literal

A numeric literal is used to specify a fixed or floating-point number.

Integral Literal

Syntax
[ + | - ] digit [ ... ] [ L | S | Y ]
Parameters

  • digit

    Any numeral from 0 to 9.

  • L

    Case insensitive, indicates BIGINT, which is an 8-byte signed integer number.

  • S

    Case insensitive, indicates SMALLINT, which is a 2-byte signed integer number.

  • Y

    Case insensitive, indicates TINYINT, which is a 1-byte signed integer number.

  • default (no postfix)

    Indicates a 4-byte signed integer number.

Examples
SELECT -2147483648 AS col;
+-----------+
|        col|
+-----------+
|-2147483648|
+-----------+

SELECT 9223372036854775807l AS col;
+-------------------+
|                col|
+-------------------+
|9223372036854775807|
+-------------------+

SELECT -32Y AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
|-32|
+---+

SELECT 482S AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
|482|
+---+

Fractional Literals

Syntax

decimal literals:

decimal_digits { [ BD ] | [ exponent BD ] } | digit [ ... ] [ exponent ] BD

double literals:

decimal_digits  { D | exponent [ D ] }  | digit [ ... ] { exponent [ D ] | [ exponent ] D }

float literals:

decimal_digits  { F | exponent [ F ] }  | digit [ ... ] { exponent [ F ] | [ exponent ] F }

While decimal_digits is defined as

[ + | - ] { digit [ ... ] . [ digit [ ... ] ] | . digit [ ... ] }

and exponent is defined as

E [ + | - ] digit [ ... ]
Parameters

  • digit

    Any numeral from 0 to 9.

  • D

    Case insensitive, indicates DOUBLE, which is an 8-byte double-precision floating point number.

  • F

    Case insensitive, indicates FLOAT, which is a 4-byte single-precision floating point number.

  • BD

    Case insensitive, indicates DECIMAL, with the total number of digits as precision and the number of digits to right of decimal point as scale.

Examples
SELECT 12.578 AS col;
+------+
|   col|
+------+
|12.578|
+------+

SELECT -0.1234567 AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|-0.1234567|
+----------+

SELECT -.1234567 AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|-0.1234567|
+----------+

SELECT 123. AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
|123|
+---+

SELECT 123.BD AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
|123|
+---+

SELECT 5E2 AS col;
+-----+
|  col|
+-----+
|500.0|
+-----+

SELECT 5D AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
|5.0|
+---+

SELECT -5BD AS col;
+---+
|col|
+---+
| -5|
+---+

SELECT 12.578e-2d AS col;
+-------+
|    col|
+-------+
|0.12578|
+-------+

SELECT -.1234567E+2BD AS col;
+---------+
|      col|
+---------+
|-12.34567|
+---------+

SELECT +3.e+3 AS col;
+------+
|   col|
+------+
|3000.0|
+------+

SELECT -3.E-3D AS col;
+------+
|   col|
+------+
|-0.003|
+------+

Datetime Literal

A Datetime literal is used to specify a datetime value.

Date Literal

Syntax
DATE { 'yyyy' |
       'yyyy-[m]m' |
       'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d' |
       'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d[T]' }

Note: defaults to 01 if month or day is not specified.

Examples
SELECT DATE '1997' AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|1997-01-01|
+----------+

SELECT DATE '1997-01' AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|1997-01-01|
+----------+

SELECT DATE '2011-11-11' AS col;
+----------+
|       col|
+----------+
|2011-11-11|
+----------+

Timestamp Literal

Syntax
TIMESTAMP { 'yyyy' |
            'yyyy-[m]m' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d ' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d[T][h]h[:]' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d[T][h]h:[m]m[:]' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d[T][h]h:[m]m:[s]s[.]' |
            'yyyy-[m]m-[d]d[T][h]h:[m]m:[s]s.[ms][ms][ms][us][us][us][zone_id]'}

Note: defaults to 00 if hour, minute or second is not specified. zone_id should have one of the forms:

  • Z - Zulu time zone UTC+0
  • +|-[h]h:[m]m
  • An id with one of the prefixes UTC+, UTC-, GMT+, GMT-, UT+ or UT-, and a suffix in the formats:
    • +|-h[h]
    • +|-hh[:]mm
    • +|-hh:mm:ss
    • +|-hhmmss
  • Region-based zone IDs in the form area/city, such as Europe/Paris

Note: defaults to the session local timezone (set via spark.sql.session.timeZone) if zone_id is not specified.

Examples
SELECT TIMESTAMP '1997-01-31 09:26:56.123' AS col;
+-----------------------+
|                    col|
+-----------------------+
|1997-01-31 09:26:56.123|
+-----------------------+

SELECT TIMESTAMP '1997-01-31 09:26:56.66666666UTC+08:00' AS col;
+--------------------------+
|                      col |
+--------------------------+
|1997-01-30 17:26:56.666666|
+--------------------------+

SELECT TIMESTAMP '1997-01' AS col;
+-------------------+
|                col|
+-------------------+
|1997-01-01 00:00:00|
+-------------------+

Interval Literal

An interval literal is used to specify a fixed period of time.

INTERVAL interval_value interval_unit [ interval_value interval_unit ... ] |
INTERVAL 'interval_value interval_unit [ interval_value interval_unit ... ]' |
INTERVAL interval_string_value interval_unit TO interval_unit

Parameters

  • interval_value

    Syntax:

    [ + | - ] number_value | '[ + | - ] number_value'

  • interval_string_value

    year-month/day-time interval string.

  • interval_unit

    Syntax:

    YEAR[S] | MONTH[S] | WEEK[S] | DAY[S] | HOUR[S] | MINUTE[S] | SECOND[S] |
MILLISECOND[S] | MICROSECOND[S]

Examples

SELECT INTERVAL 3 YEAR AS col;
+-------+
|    col|
+-------+
|3 years|
+-------+

SELECT INTERVAL -2 HOUR '3' MINUTE AS col;
+--------------------+
|                 col|
+--------------------+
|-1 hours -57 minutes|
+--------------------+

SELECT INTERVAL '1 YEAR 2 DAYS 3 HOURS';
+----------------------+
|                   col|
+----------------------+
|1 years 2 days 3 hours|
+----------------------+

SELECT INTERVAL 1 YEARS 2 MONTH 3 WEEK 4 DAYS 5 HOUR 6 MINUTES 7 SECOND 8
    MILLISECOND 9 MICROSECONDS AS col;
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                        col|
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|1 years 2 months 25 days 5 hours 6 minutes 7.008009 seconds|
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

SELECT INTERVAL '2-3' YEAR TO MONTH AS col;
+----------------+
|             col|
+----------------+
|2 years 3 months|
+----------------+

SELECT INTERVAL '20 15:40:32.99899999' DAY TO SECOND AS col;
+---------------------------------------------+
|                                          col|
+---------------------------------------------+
|20 days 15 hours 40 minutes 32.998999 seconds|
+---------------------------------------------+