The Delphi Character Set and Basic Syntax On the simplest level, a program is a sequence of tokens delimited by separators. A token is the smallest meaningful
unit of text in a program. A separator is either a blank or a comment. Strictly speaking, it is not always necessary to
place a separator between two tokens; for example, the code fragment
Size:=20;Price:=10;
is perfectly legal. Convention and readability, however, dictate that we write this as
Size := 20;
Price := 10;
Tokens are categorized as special symbols, identifiers, reserved words, directives, numerals, labels, and character
strings. A separator can be part of a token only if the token is a character string. Adjacent identifiers, reserved words,
numerals, and labels must have one or more separators between them.
Special Symbols Special symbols are non-alphanumeric characters, or pairs of such characters, that have fixed meanings. The
following single characters are special symbols:
# $ & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > @ [ ] ^ { }
The following character pairs are also special symbols:
(* (. *) .) .. // := <= >= <>
The following table shows equivalent symbols:
25
