Certain characters have special meanings in SAQL.
| Character | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
; |
Semicolon | Used to terminate statements. |
' |
Single quote | Used to quote identifiers. |
" |
Double quote | Used to quote strings. |
() |
Parentheses | Used for function calls, to enforce precedence, for order clauses, and to group expressions. Parentheses are mandatory when you’re defining more than one group or order field. |
[] |
Brackets | Used to denote arrays. For example, this is an array of strings: [ "this", "is", "a", "string", "array" ] Also used for referencing a particular member of an object. For example, em['miles'], which is the same as em.miles. |
. |
Period | Used for referencing a particular member of an object. For example, em.miles, which is the same as em['miles']. |
:: |
Two colons | Used to explicitly specify the dataset that a measure or dimension belongs to, by placing it between a dataset name and a column name. Using two colons is the same as using a period (.) between names. For example: data = foreach data generate left::airline as airline |
.. |
Two periods | Used to separate a range of values. For example: c = filter b by "the_date" in ["2011-01-01".."2011-01-31"]; |