CompareStrings - XpressDox

Comparing two strings for equality and inequality is straightforward.  However, because XpressDox relies heavily on XPATH (XPATH Tutorial), it also is constrained by some XPATH limitations. For example,

«If(('A' < 'B'))»less«Else()»not less«End()»
«If(('B' < 'A'))»less«Else()»not less«End()»

will result in

not less
not less

being put into the document.

This is because XPATH will only evaluate the comparisons = and != when applied to strings.

In order to test how we normally imagine a string comparison other than equality works, we need the XpressDox CompareStrings function. The usage of this function is illustrated as follows:

«If(CompareStrings('A','B') < 0)»less«Else()»not less«End()»
«If(CompareStrings('A','B') > 0)»greater«Else()»not greater«End()»
«If(CompareStrings('BBC','BBB') > 0)»greater«Else()»not greater«End()»
«If(CompareStrings('B','B') = 0)»Equal«End()»

this would output the following:

less
not greater
greater
Equal

into the document.