strfollow(X;Y;B)

Returns the first position where two strings differ from one another, or 0 if they are equal.

Syntax

strfollow(X;Y;B)
bstrfollow(X;Y;B)

Input

Argument Type Description
X text The string on which to apply the function

A scalar value or the name of a column
Y text The string to compare to X

A scalar value or the name of a column
B integer Specifies whether the comparison is case sensitive or not

If B=0, the comparison is not case sensitive.

If B is non-zero (including N/A), then it is treated as if it were 1 (i.e., the comparison is case sensitive).

Return Value

Returns an integer value corresponding to the first position where the string X differs from the string Y. If the strings are the same, the function returns 0.
Note: The comparison is case insensitive if and only if B=0.

Unicode code-point order (which does not correspond to the lexicographic order used in any particular language) is used for comparison. Generic (non-language-specific) Unicode case folding is used for case-insensitive comparisons.

If both X and Y are N/A, then the result is 0. If either X or Y is N/A, then the result is 1.

Sample Usage

value string2 caseflag strfollow(value;string2;caseflag)
'apple' 'application' 1 5
'apple' 'app' 1 4
'apple' 'Apple' 0 0
'Apple' 'apple' 1 1
'Apple' '' 1 1
'' '' 1 0

Additional Information

  • strfollow is Unicode (UTF-8) compliant and will work with Unicode or plain ASCII text fields.
  • If passed a string argument that is not legal Unicode, it will by default signal an error (configurable as a user preference).
  • A corresponding function bstrfollow can be used with non-Unicode strings (e.g., binary or legacy encodings).