Comparison functions and operators
Comparison operators
Operator | Description |
---|---|
< | Less than |
> | Greater than |
<= | Less than or equal to |
>= | Greater than or equal to |
= | Equal |
<> | Not equal |
!= | Not equal |
Range operator: BETWEEN
The BETWEEN
operator tests if a value is within a specified range.
It uses the syntax value BETWEEN min AND max
:
SELECT 3 BETWEEN 2 AND 6;
The statement shown above is equivalent to the following statement:
SELECT 3 >= 2 AND 3 <= 6;
To test if a value does not fall within the specified range
use NOT BETWEEN
:
SELECT 3 NOT BETWEEN 2 AND 6;
The statement shown above is equivalent to the following statement:
SELECT 3 < 2 OR 3 > 6;
A NULL
in a BETWEEN
or NOT BETWEEN
statement is evaluated
using the standard NULL
evaluation rules applied to the equivalent
expression above:
SELECT NULL BETWEEN 2 AND 4; -- null
SELECT 2 BETWEEN NULL AND 6; -- null
SELECT 2 BETWEEN 3 AND NULL; -- false
SELECT 8 BETWEEN NULL AND 6; -- false
The BETWEEN
and NOT BETWEEN
operators can also be used to
evaluate any orderable type. For example, a VARCHAR
:
SELECT 'Paul' BETWEEN 'John' AND 'Ringo'; -- true
Note that the value, min, and max parameters to BETWEEN
and NOT BETWEEN
must be the same type. For example, Trino will produce an
error if you ask it if John is between 2.3 and 35.2.
IS NULL and IS NOT NULL
The IS NULL
and IS NOT NULL
operators test whether a value
is null (undefined). Both operators work for all data types.
Using NULL
with IS NULL
evaluates to true:
select NULL IS NULL; -- true
But any other constant does not:
SELECT 3.0 IS NULL; -- false
IS DISTINCT FROM and IS NOT DISTINCT FROM
In SQL a NULL
value signifies an unknown value, so any comparison
involving a NULL
will produce NULL
. The IS DISTINCT FROM
and IS NOT DISTINCT FROM
operators treat NULL
as a known value
and both operators guarantee either a true or false outcome even in
the presence of NULL
input:
SELECT NULL IS DISTINCT FROM NULL; -- false
SELECT NULL IS NOT DISTINCT FROM NULL; -- true
In the example shown above, a NULL
value is not considered
distinct from NULL
. When you are comparing values which may
include NULL
use these operators to guarantee either a TRUE
or
FALSE
result.
The following truth table demonstrate the handling of NULL
in
IS DISTINCT FROM
and IS NOT DISTINCT FROM
:
a | b | a = b | a <> b | a DISTINCT b | a NOT DISTINCT b |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | TRUE | FALSE | FALSE | TRUE |
1 | 2 | FALSE | TRUE | TRUE | FALSE |
1 | NULL | NULL | NULL | TRUE | FALSE |
NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | FALSE | TRUE |
GREATEST and LEAST
These functions are not in the SQL standard, but are a common extension. Like most other functions in Trino, they return null if any argument is null. Note that in some other databases, such as PostgreSQL, they only return null if all arguments are null.
The following types are supported:
DOUBLE
,
BIGINT
,
VARCHAR
,
TIMESTAMP
,
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
,
DATE
greatest(value1, value2, ..., valueN) -> [same as input]
Returns the largest of the provided values.
least(value1, value2, ..., valueN) -> [same as input]
Returns the smallest of the provided values.
Quantified comparison predicates: ALL, ANY and SOME
The ALL
, ANY
and SOME
quantifiers can be used together with comparison operators in the
following way:
expression operator quantifier ( subquery )
For example:
SELECT 'hello' = ANY (VALUES 'hello', 'world'); -- true
SELECT 21 < ALL (VALUES 19, 20, 21); -- false
SELECT 42 >= SOME (SELECT 41 UNION ALL SELECT 42 UNION ALL SELECT 43); -- true
Here are the meanings of some quantifier and comparison operator combinations:
Expression | Meaning |
---|---|
A = ALL (...) | Evaluates to true when A is equal to all values. |
A <> ALL (...) | Evaluates to true when A doesn’t match any value. |
A < ALL (...) | Evaluates to true when A is smaller than the smallest value. |
A = ANY (...) | Evaluates to true when A is equal to any of the values. This form is equivalent to A IN (...) . |
A <> ANY (...) | Evaluates to true when A doesn’t match one or more values. |
A < ANY (...) | Evaluates to true when A is smaller than the biggest value. |
ANY
and SOME
have the same meaning and can be used interchangeably.
Pattern comparison: LIKE
The LIKE
operator can be used to compare values with a pattern:
... column [NOT] LIKE 'pattern' ESCAPE 'character';
Matching characters is case sensitive, and the pattern supports two symbols for matching:
_
matches any single character%
matches zero or more characters
Typically it is often used as a condition in WHERE
statements. An example is
a query to find all continents starting with E
, which returns Europe
:
SELECT * FROM (VALUES 'America', 'Asia', 'Africa', 'Europe', 'Australia', 'Antarctica') AS t (continent)
WHERE continent LIKE 'E%';
You can negate the result by adding NOT
, and get all other continents, all
not starting with E
:
SELECT * FROM (VALUES 'America', 'Asia', 'Africa', 'Europe', 'Australia', 'Antarctica') AS t (continent)
WHERE continent NOT LIKE 'E%';
If you only have one specific character to match, you can use the _
symbol
for each character. The following query uses two underscores and produces only
Asia
as result:
SELECT * FROM (VALUES 'America', 'Asia', 'Africa', 'Europe', 'Australia', 'Antarctica') AS t (continent)
WHERE continent LIKE 'A__A';
The wildcard characters _
and %
must be escaped to allow you to match
them as literals. This can be achieved by specifying the ESCAPE
character to
use:
SELECT 'South_America' LIKE 'South\_America' ESCAPE '\';
The above query returns true
since the escaped underscore symbol matches. If
you need to match the used escape character as well, you can escape it.
If you want to match for the chosen escape character, you simply escape itself.
For example, you can use \\
to match for \
.
Row comparison: IN
The IN
operator can be used in a WHERE
clause to compare column values with
a list of values. The list of values can be supplied by a subquery or directly
as static values in an array:
... WHERE column [NOT] IN ('value1','value2');
... WHERE column [NOT] IN ( subquery );
Use the optional NOT
keyword to negate the condition.
The following example shows a simple usage with a static array:
SELECT * FROM region WHERE name IN ('AMERICA', 'EUROPE');
The values in the clause are used for multiple comparisons that are combined as
a logical OR
. The preceding query is equivalent to the following query:
SELECT * FROM region WHERE name = 'AMERICA' OR name = 'EUROPE';
You can negate the comparisons by adding NOT
, and get all other regions
except the values in list:
SELECT * FROM region WHERE name NOT IN ('AMERICA', 'EUROPE');
When using a subquery to determine the values to use in the comparison, the subquery must return a single column and one or more rows.
SELECT name
FROM nation
WHERE regionkey IN (
SELECT starts_with(regionkey,"A") AS regionkey
FROM region
);