A string literal or anonymous string is a literal for a string value in the source code of a computer program. Modern programming languages commonly use a quoted sequence of characters, formally "bracketed delimiters", as in x = "foo", where , "foo" is a string literal with value foo. Methods such as escape sequences can be used to avoid the problem of delimiter collision (issues with brackets) and allow the delimiters to be embedded in a string. There are many alternate notations for specifying string literals especially in complicated cases. The exact notation depends on the programming language in question. Nevertheless, there are general guidelines that most modern programming languages follow.