BIT_OR

Takes the bitwise OR of all non-null input values. If the input parameter is NULL, the return value is also NULL.

Behavior Type

Immutable

Syntax

BIT_OR ( expression )

Parameters

Returns

BIT_OR returns:

• The same value as the argument data type.
• 1 for each bit compared, if any bit is 1; otherwise 0.

If the columns are different lengths, the return values are treated as though they are all equal in length and are right-extended with zero bytes. For example, given a group containing hex values ff, null, and f, the function ignores the null value and extends the value f to f0.

Example

The example that follows uses table t with a single column of VARBINARY data type:

=> CREATE TABLE t ( c VARBINARY(2) );
=> INSERT INTO t values(HEX_TO_BINARY('0xFF00')); 
=> INSERT INTO t values(HEX_TO_BINARY('0xFFFF'));
=> INSERT INTO t values(HEX_TO_BINARY('0xF00F'));

Query table t to see column c output:

=> SELECT TO_HEX(c) FROM t;
 TO_HEX
--------
 ff00
 ffff
 f00f
(3 rows)

Query table t to get the OR value for column c:

=> SELECT TO_HEX(BIT_OR(c)) FROM t;
 TO_HEX
--------
 ffff
(1 row)

The function is applied pairwise to all values in the group, resulting in ffff, which is determined as follows:

1. ff00 (record 1) is compared with ffff, which results in ffff.
2. The ff00 result from the previous comparison is compared with f00f (record 3), which results in ffff.