Comparing

Type of comparison

A variable's data type determines the type of comparison performed in a condition involving the variable. This is important because comparison semantics for numbers, strings and dates are very different.

Value used for comparison

When used in a condition, the variable's value is obtained in two steps:

• First the text representation of the variable is formatted as usual (see formatting); this allows influencing the value in interesting ways, such as rounding a rational number or extracting a date from a date/time.

• Then the value is converted to the data type appropriate for the comparison type (example: string, number, ...); as indicated in the table above.

See also:

• Basic syntax

• Data types

• Formatting

• Indexed variables

• String manipulations