Numeric Literals To insert binary data into a string column (such as a  BLOB  column), you should represent certain characters by escape sequences. Backslash ( \ ) and the quote character used to quote the string must be escaped. In certain client environments, it may also be necessary to escape  NUL  or Control+Z. The  mysql client truncates quoted strings containing  NUL  characters if they are not escaped, and Control+Z may be taken for END-OF-FILE on Windows if not escaped. For the escape sequences that represent each of these characters, see Table 9.1, “Special Character Escape Sequences” . When writing application programs, any string that might contain any of these special characters must be properly escaped before the string is used as a data value in an SQL statement that is sent to the MySQL server. You can do this in two ways: •Process the string with a function that escapes the special characters. In a C program, you can use the  mysql_real_escape_string_quote() C API function to escape characters. See mysql_real_escape_string_quote(). Within SQL statements that construct other SQL statements, you can use the  QUOTE()  function. The Perl DBI interface provides a  quote  method to convert special characters to the proper escape sequences. See Section 29.9, “MySQL Perl API” . Other language interfaces may provide a similar capability. •As an alternative to explicitly escaping special characters, many MySQL APIs provide a placeholder capability that enables you to insert special markers into a statement string, and then bind data values to them when you issue the statement. In this case, the API takes care of escaping special characters in the values for you. Number literals include exact-value (integer and  DECIMAL ) literals and approximate-value (floating-point) literals. Integers are represented as a sequence of digits. Numbers may include  .  as a decimal separator. Numbers may be preceded by  -  or  +  to indicate a negative or positive value, respectively. Numbers represented in scientific notation with a mantissa and exponent are approximate-value numbers. Exact-value numeric literals have an integer part or fractional part, or both. They may be signed. Examples: 1 ,  .2 ,  3.4 ,  -5 ,  -6.78 ,  +9.10 . Approximate-value numeric literals are represented in scientific notation with a mantissa and exponent. Either or both parts may be signed. Examples:  1.2E3 ,  1.2E-3 ,  -1.2E3 ,  -1.2E-3 . Two numbers that look similar may be treated differently. For example,  2.34  is an exact-value (fixed-point) number, whereas  2.34E0  is an approximate-value (floating-point) number. The  DECIMAL  data type is a fixed-point type and calculations are exact. In MySQL, the  DECIMAL  type has several synonyms:  NUMERIC ,  DEC ,  FIXED . The integer types also are exact-value types. For more information about exact-value calculations, see Section 12.25, “Precision Math” . The  FLOAT  and  DOUBLE  data types are floating-point types and calculations are approximate. In MySQL, types that are synonymous with  FLOAT  or  DOUBLE  are  DOUBLE PRECISION  and  REAL . An integer may be used in floating-point context; it is interpreted as the equivalent floating-point number. Date and time values can be represented in several formats, such as quoted strings or as numbers, depending on the exact type of the value and other factors. For example, in contexts where MySQL expects a date, it interprets any of  ’2015-07-21’ ,  ’20150721’ , and  20150721  as a date. 9.1.2 Numeric Literals 9.1.3 Date and Time Literals 1862