Comparison operators

Comparison operators are available for all data types where comparison makes sense.

Comparison operators are available for all data types where comparison makes sense. All comparison operators are binary operators that return values of true, false, or NULL.

Operator Description Binary function
< less than binary_lt
> greater than binary_gt
<= less than or equal to binary_le
>= greater than or equal to binary_ge
=, <=>

equal

binary_eq
!=, <> not equal (unsupported for correlated subqueries) binary_ne

NULL handling

Comparison operators return NULL if either or both operands are null. One exception applies: <=> returns true if both operands are NULL, and false if one operand is NULL.

Collections

When comparing collections, null collections are ordered last. Otherwise, collections are compared element by element until there is a mismatch, and then they are ordered based on the non-matching elements. If all elements are equal up to the length of the shorter one, then the shorter one is ordered first.