SIGN

Purpose

You can call this function to return the sign of the given number. The sign is 1, -1, or 0.

Syntax

SIGN(numeric_expression)

Parameters

numeric_expression is of a numeric data type such as NUMBER, FLOAT, BINARY_FLOAT, or BINARY_DOUBLE or any data type that can be implicitly converted to a numeric data type.

Return type

The return type is NUMBER.

• If numeric_expression > 0, the function returns 1.

• If numeric_expression < 0, the function returns -1.

• If numeric_expression = 0, the function returns 0.

Examples

The following example returns the signs of 2, -2, 0, and 3+3.

obclient> SELECT SIGN(2),SIGN(-2),SIGN(0),SIGN(3+3) FROM DUAL;
+---------+----------+---------+-----------+
 SIGN(2)  SIGN(-2)  SIGN(0)  SIGN(3+3) 
+---------+----------+---------+-----------+
       1        -1        0          1 
+---------+----------+---------+-----------+
1 row in set