HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Value Comparisons When you compare a CHAR and a VARCHAR string, ALLBASE/SQL pads the shorter string with ASCII blanks to the length of the longer string. The two strings are equal if the characters in the shorter string match those in the longer string and if the excess characters in the longer string are all blank. If a case sensitive CHAR column is compared to a CHAR column that is not case sensitive, both columns are treated as case sensitive. If a string constant is compared to a column that is not case sensitive, then the string constant is treated as not case sensitive. Before comparing DECIMAL numbers having different scales, ALLBASE/SQL extends the shorter scale with trailing zeroes to match the larger scale. Items of type DATE, TIME, DATETIME, and INTERVAL can be compared only with items of the same type, or with CHAR or VARCHAR strings in the correct format. All comparisons are chronological, which means the point which is farthest from '0000-01-01 00:00:00.000' is the greatest value. ALLBASE/SQL attempts to convert CHAR or VARCHAR strings to the default date/time format before performing the comparison. When you compare a BINARY and a VARBINARY hexadecimal string, ALLBASE/SQL pads the shorter binary string with binary zeroes to the length of the longer string. When comparing two BINARY or VARBINARY hexadecimal strings having different lengths, ALLBASE/SQL compares the excess binary digits of the longer binary string with binary zeroes. The two strings are equal if the binary digits in the shorter string match those in the longer string and if the excess binary digits in the longer string are all binary zero. The chapter "Search Conditions" provides more information on comparison operations.