title: EString Key Type
role: manual
tags: #manual #meta #reference #zettel #zettelstore
syntax: zmk

Values of this type are just a sequence of character, 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``.