Operators and expressions

Operators cause a CLIST to perform evaluations on data; the data can be numeric or character, or can be a variable or a built-in function. Operators fall into three categories: arithmetic, comparative, and logical, as shown in Table 1.

Arithmetic operators perform integer arithmeticon numeric operands. The operators connect integers, variables, orbuilt-in functions to form expressions, such as 4-2.
Comparative operators perform comparisonsbetween two expressions, to formcomparative expressions, such as 4-2=3. The = is a comparative operator.
The comparison produces a true or false condition. Comparative expressions are often used to determine conditional branching within a CLIST.
Logical operators perform a logical comparison between the results of two comparative expressions, to form logical expressions, such as &A=4 AND &B=&C.The ‘AND’ is a logical operator.
Logical expressions produce true or false conditions. Logical expressions are often used to determine conditional branching within a CLIST.

In Table 1, if more than one accepted value exists for an operator, the values are separated by commas.

Table 1. Arithmetic, comparative, and logical operators
	For the function:	Enter:
Arithmetic	Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division Exponentiation Remainder Prioritization the order of evaluation	+ - * / ** (See note 1) // () (See note 2)
Comparative	Equal Not equal Less than Greater than Less than or equal Not greater than Not less than	=,EQ ¬=,NE <,LT >,GT <=,LE >=,GE ¬>,NG ¬<,NL
Logical	And Or	AND,&& OR,\|
Notes: Negative exponents are handled as exponents of zero, thus the result is always set to 1. Put parentheses around operations to give them priority in the order of evaluation.

CLISTs try to perform evaluation wherever an operator is found, including the equal sign (=) in assignment statements. If you want CLISTs to treat operators as character data instead, use the &STR built-in function. For more information, see Defining character data - &STR.