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Conditional Statement Syntax

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This section describes the syntax of conditional statements used by the MsiEvaluateCondition function and the action sequence tables. For more information, see, Examples of Conditional Statement Syntax.

Summary of Conditional Statement Syntax

This table and the following list summarize the syntax to use in conditional expressions.

Item Syntax
value symbol | literal | integer
comparison-operator < | > | <= | >= | = | <>
term value | value comparison-operator value | ( expression )|
Boolean-factor term | NOT term
Boolean-term Boolean-factor | Boolean-factor AND term
expression Boolean-term | Boolean-term OR expression
symbol property | %environment-variable | $component-action | ?component-state | &feature-action | !feature-state

 

  • Symbol names and values are case sensitive.

  • Environment variable names are not case sensitive.

  • Literal text must be enclosed between quotation marks ("text").

    Note

    Literal text containing quotation marks cannot be used in conditional statements because there is no escape character for quotation marks inside literal text. To do a comparison against literal text containing quotation marks, the literal text should be put in a property. For example, to verify that the SERVERNAME property does not contain any quotation marks, define a property called QUOTES in the Property table with a value of " and change the condition to NOT SERVERNAME><QUOTES.

     

  • Nonexistent property values are treated as empty strings.

  • Floating point numeric values are not supported.

  • Operators and precedence are the same as in the BASIC and SQL languages.

  • Arithmetic operators are not supported.

  • Parentheses can be used to override operator precedence.

  • Operators are not case sensitive.

  • For string comparisons, a tilde "~" prefixed to the operator performs a comparison that is not case sensitive.

  • Comparison of an integer with a string or property value that cannot be converted to an integer is always msiEvaluateConditionFalse, except for the comparison operator "<>", which returns msiEvaluateConditionTrue.

Access Prefixes

The following table shows the prefixes to use to access various system and installer information for use in conditional expressions.

Symbol type Prefix Value
Installer property (none) Value of property (Property) table.
Environment variable % Value of environment variable.
Component table key $ Action state of the component.
Component table key ? Installed state of the component.
Feature table key & Action state of the feature.
Feature table key ! Installed state of the feature.

 

Logical Operators

The following table shows the logical operators in conditional expressions, in order of high-to-low precedence.

Operator Meaning
Not Prefix unary operator; inverts state of following term.
And TRUE if both terms are TRUE.
Or TRUE if either or both terms are TRUE.
Xor TRUE if either but not both terms are TRUE.
Eqv TRUE if both terms are TRUE or both terms are FALSE.
Imp TRUE if left term is FALSE or right term is TRUE.

 

Comparative Operators

The following table shows the comparison operators used in conditional expressions. These comparison operators can only occur between two values.

Operator Meaning
= TRUE if left value is equal to right value.
<> TRUE if left value is not equal to right value.
> TRUE if left value is greater than right value.
>= TRUE if left value is greater than or equal to right value.
< TRUE if left value is less than right value.
<= TRUE if left value is less than or equal to right value.

 

Substring Operators

The following table shows the substring operators used in conditional expressions. Substring operators can occur between two string values.

Operator Meaning
>< TRUE if left string contains the right string.
<< TRUE if left string starts with the right string.
>> TRUE if left string ends with the right string.

 

Bitwise Numeric Operators

The following table shows the bitwise numeric operators in conditional expressions. These operators can occur between two integer values.

Operator Meaning
>< Bitwise AND, TRUE if the left and right integers have any bits in common.
<< True if the high 16-bits of the left integer are equal to the right integer.
>> True if the low 16-bits of the left integer are equal to the right integer.

 

Feature and Component State Values

The following table shows where it is valid to use the feature and component operator symbols.

Operator <state> Where this syntax is valid
$component-action In the Condition table, and in the sequence tables, after the CostFinalize action.
&feature-action In the Condition table, and in the sequence tables, after the CostFinalize action.
!feature-state In the Condition table, and in the sequence tables, after the CostFinalize action.
?component-state In the Condition table, and in the sequence tables, after the CostFinalize action.

 

The following table shows the feature and component state values used in conditional expressions. These states are not set until MsiSetInstallLevel is called, either directly or by the CostFinalize action.

State Value Meaning
INSTALLSTATE_UNKNOWN -1 No action to be taken on the feature or component.
INSTALLSTATE_ADVERTISED 1 Advertised feature. This state is not available for components.
INSTALLSTATE_ABSENT 2 Feature or component is not present.
INSTALLSTATE_LOCAL 3 Feature or component on the local computer.
INSTALLSTATE_SOURCE 4 Feature or component run from the source.

 

For example, the conditional expression "&MyFeature=3" evaluates to True only if MyFeature is changing from its current state to the state of being installed on the local computer, INSTALLSTATE_LOCAL.

Note that you should not depend upon the condition $Component1=3 to check whether Component1 is locally installed on the computer. This can fail if Component1 is installed by more than one product. After Component1 has been installed locally by Product1, the installer evaluates the condition $Component1=3 as False during the installation of Product2. This is because the installer determines the version of the component using the component's key path and marks the component for installation if its version is greater than or equal to the installed component.

Note that the installer will not do direct comparisons of the Version data type in conditional statements. For example, you cannot use comparative operators to compare versions such as "01.10" and "1.010" in a conditional statement. Instead use a valid method to search for a version, such as described in Searching for Existing Applications, Files, Registry Entries or .ini File Entries, and then set a property.

Using Properties in Conditional Statements