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Comparison: Starts With

The Starts With comparison compares two values and determines whether either value starts with the whole of the other value. It therefore matches both exact matches, and matches where one of the values starts the same as the other, but contains extra information.

Use

Use the Starts With comparison to find matches for String identifiers where values frequently contain extra information at the end of the String. For example, when matching company names, the values 'Oracle' and 'Oracle Corporation' would match using the Starts With comparison.

This is also often useful when matching lines of addresses, for example, to match 'The Maltings' with 'The Maltings, 10 Borough Road', and '10 Borough Road' with '10 Borough Road, Coventry'.

This comparison does not support the use of result bands.

Options

Option

Type

Purpose

Default Value

Match No Data pairs?

Yes/No

This option determines the result of a comparison when it compares two No Data (Null, or containing only whitespace characters) values for an identifier.

If set to No, the comparison will give a 'no data' result when comparing a No Data value against another No Data value.

If set to Yes, the comparison will give a full match (TRUE) when comparing a No Data value against another No Data value. A 'no data' result will only be returned if a No Data value is compared against a populated value.

Ignore case?

Yes/No

Sets whether or not to ignore case when comparing values.

For example, if case is ignored, "Oracle Corporation" will match "ORACLE", which otherwise would not match.

Yes

Example

Example configuration

In this example, the Starts With comparison is used to match on a First Name identifier. The following options are specified:

Match No Data Pairs? = No

Ignore case? = Yes

A Trim Whitespace transformation is also added, to remove all whitespace from values before comparing them.

Example results

With the above configuration, the following table illustrates some comparison results:

Note that if either value is empty, the comparison returns a 'no data' result.

Value A	Value B	Comparison result
S	Steve	TRUE (match)
S	STEVE	TRUE (match)
Steve John	STEVE	TRUE (match)
Steve J	Steve John	TRUE (match)
Will	WIlliam	TRUE (match)
Steve John	John	FALSE (no match)
S J	Steve	FALSE (no match)
Will	Bill	FALSE (no match)
Null	Steve J	no data