---
title: Literal
description: Indexes the text in its raw form, without any splitting or processing
canonical: https://www.paradedb.com/docs/reference/tokenizers/available-tokenizers/literal
---

<Note>
  The literal tokenizer is not ideal for text search queries like
  [match](/reference/full-text/match) or [phrase](/reference/full-text/phrase).
  If you need to do text search over a field that is literal tokenized, consider
  using [multiple tokenizers](/reference/tokenizers/multiple-per-field).
</Note>

<Note>
  Because the literal tokenizer preserves the source text exactly, [token
  filters](/reference/token-filters/overview) cannot be configured for this
  tokenizer.
</Note>

The literal tokenizer applies no tokenization to the text, preserving it as-is. It is the default for `uuid` fields (since
exact UUID matching is a common use case), and is useful for doing exact string matching over text fields.

Text fields used as a sort field in a [Top K](/reference/full-text/top-k) query, or as part of an [aggregate](/reference/aggregates/overview),
must use either this tokenizer or [`literal_normalized`](/reference/tokenizers/available-tokenizers/literal-normalized).

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING paradedb (id, (description::pdb.literal))
WITH (key_field='id');
```

To get a feel for this tokenizer, run the following command and replace the text with your own:

```sql
SELECT 'Tokenize me!'::pdb.literal::text[];
```

```ini Expected Response
       text
------------------
 {"Tokenize me!"}
(1 row)
```