or

Type

Logical Operator

Purpose

The or operator combines two sets of selection criteria or comparison statements.

Syntax

SELECTION CRITERIA 1 or SELECTION CRITERIA 2

Returns

The values in records that satisfy either of the selection criteria statements.

Usage

The or operator requires that a record meet either of the specified criteria to be processed (as opposed to the and operator which requires that a record meet all the specified selection criteria to be processed).

When selection criteria are combined with both the and and or operators in one statement, the criteria must be enclosed in parentheses to clarify the meaning.

Examples

 for MEMBERS with STATE = "NY" or TOTAL DUE > 200 ;

This statement tells DataEase: Process only those MEMBERS records that contain NY in the STATE field or have a value greater than $200 in the TOTAL DUE field. A record is processed if it satisfies either of these criteria.

for MEMBERS with ( STATE = "NY" or STATE = "NJ" )

and TOTAL DUE > 200 .

This statement tells DataEase: Process only those MEMBERS records that contain either NY or NJ in the STATE field and a value greater than $200 in the TOTAL DUE field.

In this case, only records that satisfy both sets of criteria are processed.

Caution

When you combine two or more comparisons using the not operator, you must use and in the comparison. If you use or in conjunction with not, as shown below, every record in the file is processed.

STATE not = "NY" or STATE not = "NJ" ;

In this example, records that do not meet one condition will meet the other condition.