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Differences

Although we try to implement openCypher query language as closely to the language reference as possible, we had to make some changes to enhance the user experience.

Unicode codepoints in string literals#

Use \u followed by 4 hex digits in string literals for UTF-16 codepoint and \U with 8 hex digits for UTF-32 codepoint in Memgraph.

Difference from Neo4j's Cypher implementation#

The openCypher initiative stems from Neo4j's Cypher query language. Following is a list of most important differences between Neo's Cypher and Memgraph's openCypher implementation, for users that are already familiar with Neo4j. There might be other differences not documented here (especially subtle semantic ones).

Unsupported constructs#

  • Data importing. Memgraph doesn't support Cypher's CSV importing capabilities.
  • The FOREACH language construct for performing an operation on every list element.
  • Stored procedures.
  • shortestPath and allShortestPaths functions. shortestPath can be expressed using Memgraph's breadth-first expansion syntax already described in this document.
  • Patterns in expressions. For example, Memgraph doesn't support size((n)-->()). Most of the time the same functionalities can be expressed differently in Memgraph using OPTIONAL expansions, function calls etc.
  • Map projections such as MATCH (n) RETURN n {.property1, .property2}.

Unsupported functions#

General purpose functions:

  • exists(n.property) - This can be expressed using n.property IS NOT NULL.
  • length() is named size() in Memgraph.

Aggregation functions:

  • count(DISTINCT variable) - This can be expressed using WITH DISTINCT variable RETURN count(variable).

Mathematical functions:

  • percentileDisc()
  • stDev()
  • point()
  • distance()
  • degrees()

List functions:

  • any()
  • none()
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