Hexadecimal string format

The format for coding a hexadecimal string constant is:

X'yy...yy'

The value yy represents any pair of hexadecimal digits. You can specify up to 256 pairs of hexadecimal digits.

Because the first digit and sign are ignored in a PD0 field, you should not include the first digit or sign in a hexadecimal constant to be compared to a PD0 field. For example, 3-byte PD0 values like X'01234C' and X'01234D' would be equal to a hexadecimal constant of X'1234'.

Examples of valid and invalid hexadecimal constants are shown in the following table.

Table 1. Valid and Invalid Hexadecimal Constants
Valid	Invalid	Explanation
X'ABCD'	X'ABGD'	Invalid hexadecimal digit
X'BF3C'	X'BF3'	Incomplete pair of digits
X'AF050505'	'AF050505'	Missing X identifier
X'BF3C'	'BF3C'X	X identifier in wrong place