SIGN

Reference material for SIGN function

Returns the sign of a numeric value: -1 for negative values, 0 for zero, and 1 for positive values.

Syntax

SIGN(<value>)

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Supported input types
<value>	The value whose sign is returned.	DOUBLE PRECISION, REAL, INTEGER, BIGINT, NUMERIC

Return Type

Same type as the input <value>.

Remarks

• SIGN(NULL) returns NULL.
• SIGN('NaN'::DOUBLE PRECISION) returns 0, matching PostgreSQL semantics — NaN is neither positive nor negative.
• SIGN('Infinity'::DOUBLE PRECISION) returns 1.
• SIGN('-Infinity'::DOUBLE PRECISION) returns -1.

Example

The following example returns the sign of several values:

SELECT SIGN(-42.5) AS negative, SIGN(0) AS zero, SIGN(7) AS positive;

negative double	zero int	positive int
-1	0	1

Rows: 1Execution time: 2.30ms