A (or ) clause is a string of characters, each of which represents a portion of the data item and what it may contain. Some picture characters specify the type of the item and how many characters or digits it occupies in memory. For example, a indicates a decimal digit, and an indicates that the item is signed. Other picture characters (called ' and ' characters) specify how an item should be formatted. For example, a series of characters define character positions as well as how a leading sign character is to be positioned within the final character data; the rightmost non-numeric character will contain the item's sign, while other character positions corresponding to a to the left of this position will contain a space. Repeated characters can be specified more concisely by specifying a number in parentheses after a picture character; for example, is equivalent to . Picture specifications containing only digit () and sign () characters define purely ' data items, while picture specifications containing alphabetic () or alphanumeric () characters define ' data items. The presence of other formatting characters define ' or ' data items.