Skip to content

Not Equal

Signals · Comparison

Not Equal node on the canvas

True where |a - b| exceeds tolerance (the negation of Equal).

Not-Equal is True on every bar where A and B differ — the negation of an equality check. Because exact equality between two floating-point series almost never happens, it's built around a tolerance: A and B count as "different" only when they're more than tolerance apart.

How it works

Each bar it outputs True where |A − B| > tolerance, False otherwise. With tolerance = 0 it's a strict inequality; raise it to treat near-equal values as still "the same" (useful for floating-point noise or when you only care about meaningful differences). Both inputs are series, so B can be a Constant. Lookahead-free.

When to use it

Use it to detect change or mismatch: flag when a value has moved off a level, when two feeds disagree, or as the inverse of an equality gate. It's most useful paired with a tolerance so you're testing "meaningfully different," not "different in the 8th decimal."

Example

State-change flag: wire a stepped level (e.g. a session anchor) into A and its one-bar delay into B; Not-Equal with a small tolerance fires on the bar the level actually changes — a clean edge you can feed into a reset.

Tips & gotchas

  • Use a non-zero tolerance for real-valued series — exact float equality is fragile.
  • Negation of Equal — the two are exact opposites for the same tolerance.
  • Wire a Constant into B to test "differs from a fixed value."

Inputs

Socket Type What to wire in
A series Left-hand series — the one DOING the crossing. In an MA crossover this is the FAST line (e.g. EMA-20). In an RSI trigger this is the RSI line itself.
B series Right-hand series — the REFERENCE being crossed. In an MA crossover this is the SLOW line (e.g. EMA-50). In an RSI trigger this is the threshold (e.g. constant 30).

Outputs

Output Type Plots as Description
Cond signal Signal arrows Boolean result of the comparison

Parameters

Parameter Type Default What it does
Tolerance number · 0.0–10.0 0.0 Absolute difference within which a and b count as equal

Reference auto-generated from the block catalog · category Signals.