Relations

You use relations to compare values in the Relevance language. There are the standard alpha and numeric comparators (=, !=, <, >, >=, <=) as well a few strictly string relations (starts with, ends with, contains). Here are some examples of expressions that use relations:

Q: 1 < 2
A: True
Q: 2 is not less than or equal to 1
A: True

String compares use alphabetic order:

Q: "the whole" is greater than "the sum of the parts"
A: True

Some relations look for substrings of other strings:

Q: "nowhere" starts with "now"
A: True
Q: "nowhere" ends with "here"
A: True
Q: "nowhere" contains "her"
A: True
Q: "he" is contained by "nowhere"
A: True

Relations return a boolean TRUE or FALSE depending on the outcome of the comparison. Here is a table of the relation symbols and their English equivalents:

SymbolEnglish Version
=is
!=is not
<is less than
<=is less than or equal to
>is greater than
>=is greater than or equal to
starts with
ends with
contains
is contained by