User Manual / v3 / Language / Literals

Literals

Fixed values assigned with immediate values (e.g., 10, 3.14, "value"), which may not be altered by the script, are called literals. Literals can only be a type of integer, float, bool and string.

In Pine there are no literals which represent values of a series type. Instead, there are built-in variables of a series type (such as open, high, low, close, volume, time, hl2, hlc3, ohlc4). These variables are not literals.

Integer literals

Integral-valued literals can be presented only in the decimal system. For example:

1 750 94572 100

Floating-point literals

Real literals in comparison with integral-valued literals contain a delimiter (the symbol .) and/or the symbol e (which means “multiply by 10 to the power of X”, where X is the number after the symbol e) or both. Examples:

3.14159 // 3.14159 6.02e23 // 6.02 * 10^23 1.6e-19 // 1.6 * 10^-19 3.0 // 3.0

The first number is the rounded number Pi (π), the second number is very large, while the third is very small. The fourth number is simply the number 3 as a floating point number.

Boolean literals

There are only two literals for representing logical values:

true // true value false // false value

String literals

String literals may be enclosed by single or double quotation marks, for example:

"This is a double quoted string literal" 'This is a single quoted string literal'

Single or double quotation marks are completely the same --- you may use what you prefer. The line that was written with double quotation marks may contain a single quotation mark, just as a line that is written with single quotation marks may contain double quotation marks:

"It's an example" 'The "Star" indicator'

If a user needs to put either double quotation marks in a line that is enclosed by double quotation marks (or put single quotation marks in a line that is enclosed by single quotation marks,) then they must be preceded with backslash. For example:

'It\'s an example' "The \"Star\" indicator"

Color literals

Color literals have the following format: # followed by 6 or 8 hexadecimal digits matching RGB or RGBA value. The first two digits determine the value for the red color component, the second two --- for green, and the third pair --- the value for the blue component. Each component value is a hexadecimal number between 00 and FF (0 and 255 in decimal).

Fourth pair of digits is optional. When set, it specifies the alpha (opacity) component which value is also between 00 (fully transparent) and FF (fully opaque). Examples:

#000000 // black color #FF0000 // red color #00FF00 // green color #0000FF // blue color #FFFFFF // white color #808080 // gray color #3ff7a0 // some custom color #FF000080 // 50% transparent red color #FF0000FF // same as #00FF00, fully opaque red color #FF000000 // completely transparent color

It is possible to change transparency of the color using built-in function color. Here is an example of color usage:

//@version=2 study(title="Shading the chart's background", overlay=true) c = navy bgColor = (dayofweek == monday) ? color(c, 50) : (dayofweek == tuesday) ? color(c, 60) : (dayofweek == wednesday) ? color(c, 70) : (dayofweek == thursday) ? color(c, 80) : (dayofweek == friday) ? color(c, 90) : color(blue, 80) bgcolor(color=bgColor)

You can control transparency in properties of a study on Style tab: