Progress
Language Reference


BEGINS Operator

Interfaces
OS
SpeedScript
All
All
Yes

Tests a character expression to see if that expression begins with a second character expression.

SYNTAX

expression1 BEGINS expression2 

expression1

An expression that has a character value that you test to see if it begins with expression2.

expression2

An expression that has a character value that you want to compare to the beginning of expression1. If you specify a null value ("") for expression2, Progress returns all the records in the database.

EXAMPLES

In this procedure, the user supplies a customer name or the first characters of a customer name. The procedure finds customer records where the name field begins with the user’s input. If the customer file is indexed on the name field, this procedure is very efficient and retrieves only the selected records.

r-bgns.p
DEFINE VARIABLE cname LIKE customer.name LABEL "Name".

REPEAT:
  SET cname WITH SIDE-LABELS.
  FOR EACH customer WHERE name BEGINS cname:
    DISPLAY name address city state postal-code.
  END.
END. 

The next procedure lists exactly the same customers. However, it is much less efficient because it retrieves and examines all customer records, and only displays the ones with the appropriate names.

r-bgns2.p
DEFINE VARIABLE cname LIKE customer.name LABEL "Name".

REPEAT:
    SET cname WITH SIDE-LABELS.
    /* create MATCHES pattern */
    cname = cname + "*".
    FOR EACH customer WHERE name MATCHES cname:
        DISPLAY name address city state postal-code.
    END.
END. 

NOTES

SEE ALSO

MATCHES Operator


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