Scalars

Data in EdgeDB is composed from: numbers, booleans, text, date, time, or JSON. So let's start with learning what these scalar types are and how they interact with each other.

Boolean values are represented by the words "true" and "false" (case-insensitive). Try selecting a boolean literal:

String literals are anything put inside a pair of either single or double quotes. They also support special escaped characters, such as "\n" for a new line or even exotic unicode like emojis. Try them out:

Bytes are very similar to strings in structure, but bytes literals start with a b prefix. Since the characters inside the bytes literal are supposed to represent one byte each, no non-ascii unicode characters are allowed. Try them out:

But emojis and even common accented characters represent more than one byte and aren't allowed in a bytes literal:

Numbers can be divided into two categories based on whether they are of fixed finite size in memory or unlimited. By default, number literals represent the fixed-size integer or floating-point numbers used in many programming languages. Try them out:

Integers that are too large to fit into 64 bits will result in an error:

However, if you add n at the end of this very big integer, EdgeDB will know that this is supposed to be a number without any upper limit. Try adding n at the end to make the error go away.

Similarly, the n suffix tells EdgeDB to treat floating point numbers as if they had infinite precision. Try the following example with and without the n suffix: