Literals:
The actual values can too appear in a program. These values are termed as literals. For illustration, the statement MOVE 0 TO TOTAL indicates that the value zero will be moved to the variable TOTAL. This constant 0 that is used in the body of the statement is a literal.
A data name may have various values at various points of time while a literal means the specific value that remains unchanged throughout the execution of the program. For this reason the literal is frequently termed as a constant. Furthermore the literal is not given a name; it presents itself and does not need to be defined in the Data Division.
There are 3 kinds of literals:
a) Numeric
b) Nonnumeric.
c) Figurative constants