title: EString Key Type
role: manual
tags: #manual #meta #reference #zettel #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001006030000 00001012931200
backward: 00001006030000 00001012931200
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20210212135017
forward: 00001006010000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20250102164729
published: 20250102164729
visibility: public

Values of this type are just a sequence of characters, possibly an empty sequence.

An EString is the most general metadata key type, as it places no restrictions to the character sequence.[^Well, there are some minor restrictions that follow from the [[metadata syntax|00001006010000]].]
=== Allowed values
All printable characters are allowed.
=== Query comparison
All comparisons are done case-insensitive, i.e. ""hell"" will be the prefix of ""Hello"".
=== Sorting
To sort two values, the underlying encoding is used to determine which value is less than the other.

Uppercase letters are typically interpreted as less than their corresponding lowercase letters, i.e. ``A < a``.

Comparison is done character-wise by finding the first difference in the respective character sequence.
For example, ``abc > aBc``.