Documentation Source Text

<p>^SQLite may attempt to convert values between the storage classes
INTEGER, REAL, and/or TEXT before performing a comparison.
^Whether or not any conversions are attempted before the comparison takes
place depends on the type affinity of the operands.

<p>To "apply affinity" means to convert an operand to a particular storage
class if and only if the conversion is lossless and reversible.
^(Affinity is applied to operands of a comparison operator prior to
class if and only if the conversion does not lose essential information.
Numeric values can always be converted into TEXT.  TEXT values 
can be converted into numeric values if the text content is a well-formed 
integer or real literal, but not a hexadecimal integer literal.
BLOB values are converted into TEXT values by simply interpreting
the binary BLOB context as a text string in the current database
encoding.

<p>^(Affinity is applied to operands of a comparison operator prior to
the comparison according to the following rules in the order shown:)^</p>

<ul>
<li><p>^If one operand has INTEGER, REAL or NUMERIC affinity
and the other operand has TEXT or BLOB or no affinity
then NUMERIC affinity is applied to other operand.