SIGN

Syntax

Description of the illustration sign.gif

Purpose

SIGN returns the sign of n. This function takes as an argument any numeric datatype, or any nonnumeric datatype that can be implicitly converted to NUMBER, and returns NUMBER.

For value of NUMBER type, the sign is:

• -1 if n<0

• 0 if n=0

• 1 if n>0

For binary floating-point numbers (BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE), this function returns the sign bit of the number. The sign bit is:

• -1 if n<0

• +1 if n>=0 or n=NaN

Examples

The following example indicates that the argument of the function (-15) is <0:

SELECT SIGN(-15) "Sign" FROM DUAL;

      Sign
----------
        -1