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" }
is a literal value for a shelf. Note that the braces are part of the shelf literal.
A shelf can be initialized with a shelf literal:
define string source function format-numbers (read-only integer j) elsewhere process local integer i initial { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 } output format-numbers (i)Here, the portion following the
initial keyword is a shelf literal being used to initialize the integer shelf i. However, in this case, the local integer shelf i is
unnecessary, as the shelf literal itself can be passed directly to the function:
define string source function format-numbers (read-only integer j) elsewhere process output format-numbers ({ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 })