A <BLOB literal> is the letter "X" (upper case mandatory) followed by a string of zero or more hexits inside a pair of single quote marks. (A hexit is either (a) any of the digits 0 through 9 or (b) any of the letters A through F (upper case or lower case allowed) and is four bits long -- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E and F are interpreted as 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110 and 1111, respectively.) Its <data type> is variable length BLOB. The <literal>'s length is four times the number of hexits inside the quote marks; the delimiting single quotes are not part of the <literal>, therefore they are not included in the calculation of the <BLOB literal>'s size. Here are some examples of <BLOB literal>s:

   X'49FE'
   X'a31d'

[Obscure Rule] A long <BLOB literal> may be broken up into two or more smaller <BLOB literal>s, split by a <separator> that must include a newline character. When such a <literal> is encountered, your DBMS will ignore the <separator> and treat the multiple strings as a single <literal>. For example, these two <BLOB literal>s are equivalent:

   X'49FE'
'A31D'

   X'49FEA31D'

(In the first example, there is a carriage return newline <separator> between "FE'" and "'A3".)

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