Comparison Operators v13

The usual comparison operators are shown in the following table:

OperatorDescription
<Less than
>Greater than
<=Less than or equal to
>=Greater than or equal to
=Equal
<>Not equal
!=Not equal

Comparison operators are available for all data types where this makes sense. All comparison operators are binary operators that return values of type BOOLEAN; expressions like 1 < 2 < 3 are not valid (because there is no < operator to compare a Boolean value with 3).

In addition to the comparison operators, the special BETWEEN construct is available.

a BETWEEN x AND y

is equivalent to

a >= x AND a <= y

Similarly,

a NOT BETWEEN x AND y

is equivalent to

a < x OR a > y

There is no difference between the two respective forms apart from the CPU cycles required to rewrite the first one into the second one internally.

To check whether a value is or is not null, use the constructs

expression IS NULL

expression IS NOT NULL

Do not write expression = NULL because NULL is not "equal to" NULL. (The null value represents an unknown value, and it is not known whether two unknown values are equal.) This behavior conforms to the SQL standard.

Some applications may expect that expression = NULL returns true if expression evaluates to the null value. It is highly recommended that these applications be modified to comply with the SQL standard.