Comparison operators

The equal sign is just one of a number of comparison operators you can use in ABL expressions. The following table provides a complete list.

Table 1. Comparison operators
Keyword Symbol Explanation
EQ = Equal to
NE <> Not equal to
GT > Greater than
LT < Less than
GE >= Greater than or equal to
LE <= Less than or equal to
BEGINS Not applicable A character value that begins with this substring
MATCHES Not applicable A character value that matches this substring, which can include wild card characters

The expression you use to the right of the MATCHES keyword can contain wild card characters:

  • An asterisk (*) represents one or more missing characters
  • A period (.) represents exactly one missing character
CONTAINS Not applicable A database text field that has a special kind of index called a WORD-INDEX

The WORD-INDEX indexes all the words in a field's text strings, for all the records of the table, allowing you to locate individual words or associated words in the database records, much as you do when you use an Internet search engine to locate text in documents on the Web