String operators

The table summarizes the string operators available in APL. For set membership operators (in, !in, in~, !in~), see Set membership operators.

RHS = right-hand side of the expression LHS = left-hand side of the expression

Case-sensitivity

Operators with _cs suffix are case-sensitive.

When two operators do the same task, use the case-sensitive one for better performance.

For example:

• Instead of =~, use ==
• Instead of has_any, use has_any_cs
• Instead of contains, use contains_cs

Best practices

• Use case-sensitive operators when you know the case to improve performance.
• Avoid complex regular expressions for basic matching tasks. Use basic string operators instead.
• When matching against a set of values, ensure the set is as small as possible to improve performance.
• For matching substrings, use prefix or suffix matching instead of general substring matching for better performance.

Equality and inequality operators

Operators:

• ==
• !=
• =~
• !~
• in
• !in
• in~
• !in~

Query examples:

"get" == "get"
"get" != "GET"
"get" =~ "GET"
"get" !~ "put"

• Use == or != for exact match comparisons when case sensitivity is important.
• Use =~ or !~ for case-insensitive comparisons or when you don't know the exact case.

Subsequence-matching operators

Operators:

• contains
• !contains
• contains_cs
• !contains_cs
• startswith
• !startswith
• startswith_cs
• !startswith_cs
• endswith
• !endswith
• endswith_cs
• !endswith_cs

Query examples:

"parentSpanId" contains "Span" // True
"parentSpanId" !contains "xyz" // True
"parentSpanId" startswith "parent" // True
"parentSpanId" endswith "Id" // True
"parentSpanId" contains_cs "Span" // True if parentSpanId is "parentSpanId", False if parentSpanId is "parentspanid" or "PARENTSPANID"
"parentSpanId" startswith_cs "parent" // True if parentSpanId is "parentSpanId", False if parentSpanId is "ParentSpanId" or "PARENTSPANID"
"parentSpanId" endswith_cs "Id" // True if parentSpanId is "parentSpanId", False if parentSpanId is "parentspanid" or "PARENTSPANID"

Use case-sensitive operators (contains_cs, startswith_cs, endswith_cs) when you know the case to improve performance.

Regular-expression-matching operators

Operators:

• matches regex
• !matches regex

Query examples:

"parentSpanId" matches regex "p.*Id" // True
"parentSpanId" !matches regex "x.*z" // True

Avoid complex regular expressions or use string operators for simple substring, prefix, or suffix matching.

Term-matching operators

A term is a contiguous sequence of Unicode letters and numbers. Any other character, including spaces, hyphens, underscores, and dots, acts as a term boundary. For example, foo-bar and foo_bar each produce the terms foo and bar, so has "foo" matches both.

Operators:

• has
• !has
• has_cs
• !has_cs
• has_any
• has_any_cs
• hasprefix
• !hasprefix
• hasprefix_cs
• !hasprefix_cs
• hassuffix
• !hassuffix
• hassuffix_cs
• !hassuffix_cs

Query examples:

"North America" has "america" // True
"North America" !has "america" // False
"North America" has_cs "America" // True
"North America" !has_cs "America" // False
"North America" has_any ("america", "asia") // True
"North America" has_any_cs ("America", "Asia") // True
"Admin_User" hasprefix "Admin" // True
"Admin_User" !hasprefix "Admin" // False
"DOCS_file" hasprefix_cs "DOCS" // True
"DOCS_file" !hasprefix_cs "DOCS" // False
"documentation.docx" hassuffix ".docx" // True
"documentation.docx" !hassuffix ".docx" // False
"Document.HTML" hassuffix_cs ".HTML" // True
"Document.HTML" !hassuffix_cs ".HTML" // False

• Use has or has_cs for term matching which can be more efficient than regular expression matching for simple term searches.
• Use has_any or has_any_cs for matching against multiple possible terms.
• Use has_cs or has_any_cs when you know the case to improve performance.
• Unlike the contains operator, which matches any substring, the has operator looks for exact terms, ensuring more precise results.