title: Unexpected symbol near '<'
body: <p>I'm trying to code something in Lua where you must be exactly 12 years old to make it print <code>"Welcome!"</code>. However, whenever I run this code, I get an error message saying</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Unexpected symbol near '&lt;'.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The error message says that this is on line 3. If possible, could anyone also point out the other potential errors in this code? My code looks as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>io.write ("Enter your age:")
      age = io.read()
  if age == &lt;12 then
      print ("O noes, you are too young!")
  elseif age == &gt;12 then
      print ("O noes, you are too old!")
  else 
      print ("Welcome, son!")
  end
  </code></pre>