The ARRAY_EQUAL function is a fast way to compare data for equality in situations where the index of the elements that differ are not of interest. This operation is much faster than using TOTAL(A NE B), because it stops the comparison as soon as the first inequality is found, an intermediate array is not created, and only one pass is made through the data. For best speed, ensure that the operands are of the same data type.
Arrays may be compared to scalars, in which case each element is compared to the scalar. For two arrays to be equal, they must have the same number of elements. If the types of the operands differ, the type of the least precise is converted to that of the most precise, unless the NO_TYPECONV keyword is specified to prevent it. This function works on all numeric types, strings, pointer references, and object references. In the case of pointer and object references, ARRAY_EQUAL compares the references (which are long integers), not the heap variables to which the references point.
Result = ARRAY_EQUAL( Op1 , Op2 [, /NO_TYPECONV ] )
Returns 1 (true) if, and only if, all elements of Op1 are equal to Op2; returns 0 (false) at the first instance of inequality.
The variables to be compared.
By default, ARRAY_EQUAL converts operands of different types to a common type before performing the equality comparison. Set NO_TYPECONV to disallow this implicit type conversion. If NO_TYPECONV is specified, operands of different types are never considered to be equal, even if their numeric values are the same.
; Return True (1) if all elements of a are equal to a 0 byte:
IF ARRAY_EQUAL(a, 0b) THEN ...
; Return True (1) if all elements of a are equal all elements of b:
IF ARRAY_EQUAL(a, b) THEN ...
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5.4 |
Introduced |