Operators and symbols

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An operator is a symbol, set of symbols, or keyword that specifies an operation to be performed on data. Data is supplied in the form of arguments, or operands.

For example, in the expression "total = 0", the equal sign is the operator and "total" and "0" are the operands. In this expression, the numeric operator "=" takes two operands, which makes it a binary operator. Operators that require just one operand (such as the numeric increment operator "++") are known as unary operators.

Operators are categorized by type. dBL’s operators are classified as follows:

Most symbols you see in dBL code are operators, but not all. Quotation marks, for example, are used to denote literal strings and thus are part of the representation of a data type. Since they don’t act upon data, they’re a "non-operational" symbol.

You can use the following non-operational symbols in dBL code:

Finally, the following symbols are used as dBL commands when they are used to begin a statement: