BEGINS operator

Tests a character expression to see if that expression begins with a second character expression.

Syntax

expression1 BEGINS expression2
expression1
An expression that has a CHARACTER or LONGCHAR value that you test to see if it begins with expression2.
expression2
An expression that has a character value that you want to compare to the beginning of expression1. If you specify a null value ("") for expression2, the AVM returns all the records in the database.

Examples

In this procedure, the user supplies a customer name or the first characters of a customer name. The procedure finds customer records where the name field begins with the user's input. If the customer file is indexed on the name field, this procedure is very efficient and retrieves only the selected records.

r-bgns.p

DEFINE VARIABLE cName NO-UNDO LIKE customer.name LABEL "Name".

REPEAT:
  SET cName WITH SIDE-LABELS.
  FOR EACH Customer NO-LOCK WHERE Customer.Name BEGINS cName:
    DISPLAY Customer.Name Customer.Address Customer.City Customer.State
      Customer.PostalCode.
  END.
END.

The next procedure lists exactly the same customers. However, it is much less efficient because it retrieves and examines all customer records, and only displays the ones with the appropriate names.

r-bgns2.p

DEFINE VARIABLE cName NO-UNDO LIKE customer.name LABEL "Name".

REPEAT:
  SET cName WITH SIDE-LABELS.
  /* Create MATCHES pattern */
  cName = cName + "*".
  FOR EACH Customer NO-LOCK WHERE Customer.Name MATCHES cName:
    DISPLAY Customer.Name Customer.Address Customer.City Customer.State
      Customer.PostalCode.
  END.
END.

Notes

See also

MATCHES operator