Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn about the PostgreSQL OR
logical operator and how to use it to combine multiple boolean expressions.
In PostgreSQL, a boolean value can have one of three values: true
, false
, and null
.
PostgreSQL uses true
, 't'
, 'true'
, 'y'
, 'yes'
, '1'
to represent true
and false
, 'f'
, 'false'
, 'n'
, 'no'
, and '0'
to represent false
.
A boolean expression is an expression that evaluates to a boolean value. For example, the expression 1<>1
is a boolean expression that evaluates to false
:
SELECT 1 <> 1 AS result;
Output:
result
--------
f
(1 row)
The letter f
in the output indicates false
.
The OR
operator is a logical operator that combines multiple boolean expressions. Here’s the basic syntax of the OR
operator:
expression1 OR expression2
In this syntax, expression1
and expression2
are boolean expressions that evaluate to true
, false
, or null
.
The OR
operator returns true
only if any of the expressions is true
. It returns false
if both expressions are false. Otherwise, it returns null.
The following table shows the results of the OR
operator when combining true
, false
, and null
. Note that the order of the expressions doesn't matter, for example both false OR null
and null OR false
will evaluate to null
.
In practice, you usually use the OR
operator in a WHERE
clause to ensure that either of the specified expressions must be true for a row to be included in the result set.
Let’s explore some examples of using the OR
operator.
The following example uses the OR
operator to combine true
with true
, which returns true
:
SELECT true OR true AS result;
Output:
result
--------
t
(1 row)
The following statement uses the OR
operator to combine true
with false
, which returns true:
SELECT true OR false AS result;
Output:
result
--------
t
(1 row)
The following example uses the OR
operator to combine true
with null
, which returns true
:
SELECT true OR null AS result;
Output:
result
--------
t
(1 row)
The following example uses the OR
operator to combine false
with false
, which returns false
:
SELECT false OR false AS result;
Output:
result
--------
f
(1 row)
The following example uses the OR
operator to combine false
with null
, which returns null
:
SELECT false OR null AS result;
Output:
result
--------
null
(1 row)
The following example uses the OR
operator to combine null
with null
, which returns null
:
SELECT null OR null AS result;
Output:
result
--------
null
(1 row)
We’ll use the film
table from the sample database for the demonstration:
The following example uses the OR
operator in the WHERE
clause to find the films that have a rental rate is 0.99
or 2.99
:
SELECT
title,
rental_rate
FROM
film
WHERE
rental_rate = 0.99 OR
rental_rate = 2.99;
Output:
title | rental_rate
-----------------------------+-------------
Academy Dinosaur | 0.99
Adaptation Holes | 2.99
Affair Prejudice | 2.99
African Egg | 2.99
...
OR
operator to combine multiple boolean expressions.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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