Literal Expressions

Domain declares two built-in literal types, Number and String. Objects of these literal types can appear in Substance only as literal expressions:

• If a number literal (e.g., 1.234, 5, -3.14159) appears in Substance, it will be interpreted as an object of type Number.
• If a string literal (e.g., "hello world") appears in Substance, it will be interpreted as an object of type String.

Explicit declarations like these of objects with these literal types are disallowed:

String s
Number n

Using Literal Expressions as Arguments

If a predicate / function / constructor argument expects a literal type, then we need to provide it a literal expression. We illustate this using an example:

Suppose the domain schema is as follows:

type Set
predicate HasNum(Set set, Number num)
predicate HasStr(Set set, String str)

Then, this is a valid substance program

Set s1, s2
HasNum(s1, 1.234)
HasNum(s1, 2)
HasStr(s1, "Hello")
HasNum(s2, 5.678)
HasNum(s2, -5.678)
HasStr(s2, "world")

since numerical literals (1.234, 2, 5.678, and -5.678) have type Number and string literals ("Hello" and "world") have type String.

Literal Expressions in Indexed Statements

Within an indexed statement, if an identifier name coincides with the template variable name, Substance treats it as a numerical literal expression, like

NumberSet s
Contains(s, i) for i in [1, 10]
  -- ok: expands into Contains(s, 1), Contains(s, 2), ..., Contains(s, 10)