Easytrieve Greater Than or Equal Operator (>=)

Basic Syntax

Greater than or equal in conditions: IF SCORE >= 90, IF TENURE >= MIN-YRS, IF BALANCE >= 0. True when left meets or exceeds right.

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JOB INPUT PAYROLL
  IF GROSS >= MIN-WAGE
     COMPLIANT = Y
  END-IF
 
  IF SERVICE-YRS >= 10
     PRINT LONGEVITY-RPT
  END-IF

>= Versus GE

Inclusive Floor Semantics

Policy at least five years maps to >= 5 or GE 5. Policy more than five years maps to > 5. At boundary, >= true and > false. Misapplied strict > drops eligible employees, members, or transactions at exact threshold—common audit finding in benefits batch jobs.

Minimum Wage and Compliance

IF GROSS >= MIN-WAGE marks compliant rows including those paid exactly minimum. Exception report uses IF GROSS < MIN-WAGE for underpay. Pair both for audit dashboard counts. Implied decimal on P 2 MIN-WAGE and GROSS must align—state minimum 7.25 stored as P 2 literal or field with two decimal places.

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DEFINE MIN-WAGE W 5 P 2 VALUE 7.25
 
JOB INPUT PAYROLL
  IF GROSS < MIN-WAGE
     PRINT UNDERPAY-EXCEPTION
  END-IF

Seniority and Service Year Floors

IF SERVICE >= 20 grants vesting including twentieth year. IF GRADE >= 14 federal pay table band entry. Integer years fit >= naturally. Fractional years need consistent scale—IF SERVICE-YRS >= 5.0 at P 1 when FILE stores tenths of years.

Overtime At Least Forty Hours

Contract language forty hours or more per week maps IF TOTAL-HRS >= 40 not IF TOTAL-HRS > 40. Exactly forty hours triggers overtime eligibility under that rule. Verify union agreement wording before choosing > versus >=—legal text wins over programmer habit.

Non-Negative and Positive Filters

IF BALANCE >= 0 includes zero balance accounts. IF GROSS >= 0 includes zero pay— contrast IF GROSS > 0 excluding zeros from listing. Pick filter matching report purpose—active accounts with zero balance may still need >= 0; payment register may use > 0.

Date On-or-After Effective

IF EFF-DATE >= POLICY-START includes policies effective on start date. Date internal formats must match between operands. Test record on start date in QA. Combine IF EFF-DATE >= START AND EFF-DATE <= END for closed effective window.

Banded Ranges

IF SCORE >= 80 AND SCORE <= 89 defines grade B band with both bounds inclusive. THRU alternative IF SCORE EQ 80 THRU 89 per manual THRU semantics. Senior IF AGE >= 65 with no upper bound selects all seniors—add AND AGE <= MAX if capped program.

>= With Arithmetic

IF REG + OT >= STD tests total hours floor. IF NET >= GROSS - MAX-DED computes right side before compare. Parentheses when documenting: IF (A + B) >= THRESHOLD.

Alphabetic Greater Than or Equal

IF CODE >= N selects codes at or after N in collating order including exact match to padded literal N when lengths align. Region reporting sometimes uses alphabetic floors when codes are letters not numbers.

Common >= Mistakes

• Using > when policy says at least including boundary.
• Confusing >= floor with <= ceiling.
• Date format mismatch on boundary day tests.
• Decimal scale mismatch on minimum wage compare.
• Mixing >= and GE without team standard.
• Overtime rule mis-coded with strict > 40.

Explain It Like I'm Five

Greater than or equal means the same as or bigger. If the ride requires you to be at least forty inches tall, forty inches exactly is tall enough—you may ride. Strict greater than would mean you must be taller than forty inches, so exactly forty might not work. The >= sign tells the computer the line counts too, not just above it.

Exercises

1. Write senior IF AGE >= 65 with PRINT eligibility report.
2. Contrast overtime IF HRS >= 40 versus IF HRS > 40 in writing.
3. Write minimum wage compliance IF GROSS >= MIN-WAGE.
4. Build grade band IF SCORE >= 80 AND SCORE <= 89.
5. Rewrite IF TENURE GE 3 using >= only.