GREATEST

Syntax

GREATEST ( expression, expression [, expression ...] )

Arguments

expression: any number of expressions. This may be a column name, the result of another function, or a math operation.

Return Type

The highest value, in the type of the input.

For example, if all arguments are integers, they are compared as integers. If one argument is a decimal type, they are compared as decimal types. If arguments are a mix of strings and numbers, they are compared as numbers. If an argument is a nonbinary string, the arguments are compared as nonbinary strings.

Examples

SQL

SELECT GREATEST(1, 2, 3);

+-------------------+
| GREATEST(1, 2, 3) |
+-------------------+
|                 3 |
+-------------------+

SQL

SELECT GREATEST('a', 'b', '_', '9', 'c');

+-----------------------------------+
| GREATEST('a', 'b', '_', '9', 'c') |
+-----------------------------------+
| _                                 |
+-----------------------------------+

Caution

Implicit Collation

When character_set_server is set to utf8, string literals with characters using 4-byte encoding are implicitly assigned binary collation and processed as a sequence of bytes rather than characters. This implicit conversion to binary collation causes string functions to return unexpected results. To avoid using implicit binary collation, either use explicit type casting or use database columns defined with the utf8mb4 character set.

For more information, refer to Implicit Collation in Special Cases.

GREATEST

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Syntax

Arguments

Return Type

Examples

Implicit Collation

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