• For the EBCDIC character set, the EBCDIC collating sequence is used.

• For the ASCII character set, the ASCII collating sequence is used. (See Appendix B, "EBCDIC and ASCII Collating Sequences" in topic APPENDIX1.2.)

• >_Workstation_> Under AIX, OS/2, and Windows if the collating sequence specified is NATIVE (explicitly or by default), the comparisons of characters are based on the collating sequence indicated by the locale setting. For more information on locale, see Appendix F, "Locale Considerations (Workstation Only)" in topic APPENDIX1.6. <_Workstation_<

• When the PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE clause is specified in the OBJECT-COMPUTER paragraph, the collating sequence associated with the alphabet-name clause in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph is used.

Operands of Equal Size

Characters in corresponding positions of the two operands are compared, beginning with the leftmost character and continuing through the rightmost character.

If all pairs of characters through the last pair test as equal, the operands are considered as equal.

If a pair of unequal characters is encountered, the characters are tested to determine their relative positions in the collating sequence. The operand containing the character higher in the sequence is considered the greater operand.

Operands of Unequal Size

If the operands are of unequal size, the comparison is made as though the shorter operand were extended to the right with enough spaces to make the operands equal in size.

Table 25. Permissible Comparisons with Nonnumeric Second Operands
First Operand	Second Operand
	GR	AL	AN	ANE	NE	FC(2)	NNL
Nonnumeric Operand
Group (GR)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Alphabetic (AL)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Alphanumeric (AN)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Alphanumeric-edite              (ANE)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Numeric-Edited                (NE)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Figurative    Constant (FC(2))	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Nonnumeric       Literal (NNL)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Numeric Operand
Figurative       Constant ZERO                (ZR)	NN	NN	NN	NN	NN
Numeric Literal                (NL)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)
External Decimal                (ED)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)	NN(1)
Binary (BI)
Arithmetic     Expression (AE)
Internal Decimal                (ID)
X           Internal  X     Floating-point  X              (IFP)	X         X         X	X         X         X	X         X         X	X         X         X	X         X         X	X         X         X	X         X         X
X           External  X     Floating-point  X              (EFP)	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X	X    NN   X         X
X     Floating-point  X      Literal (FPL)	X         X	X         X	X         X	X         X	X         X	X         X	X         X
Note:                                                                                                                                                   (1) Integer item only.                                                      (2) Includes all figurative constants except ZERO.

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