A shelf literal is the portion of a shelf declaration following the initial keyword: much like "Hello, world!" is a string literal, 5 is a numeric literal, and true is a switch literal, so

  {"Hello, World!" with key "a", "Salut, Monde!" with key "b"}

You can initialize a shelf with a shelf literal expression:

  process
     local integer my-constant-numbers initial { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }
     output format-numbers (my-constant-numbers)

You can also use a literal expression to set the value of a variable anywhere in code:

  set my-integer to 7

You can use a shelf literal to set a value or to specify a function argument:

  define string source function format-numbers (read-only integer the-numbers)
    as
      repeat over the-numbers
        output "4fkd" % the-numbers || "%n"
      again
  
  process
     output format-numbers ({1, 2, 3, 4, 5})

This feature is very useful when writing unit tests for code. It saves having to create a shelf variable and initialize it when it is needed only once.

Prerequisite Concepts Shelves Variables and Constants

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