Phase angle (astronomy) less than 90° represent backscattering; values greater than 90° represent forward scattering. For some objects, such as the Moon (see lunar phases), Venus and Mercury the phase angle (as seen from the Earth) covers the full 0–180° range. The superior planets cover shorter ranges. For example, for Mars the maximum phase angle is about 45°. The brightness of an object is a function of the phase angle, which is generally smooth, except for the so-called opposition spike near 0°, which does not affect gas giants or bodies with pronounced atmospheres, and when the object becomes fainter as the angle approaches
Less-than sign is used to denote the beginning of a heredoc statement (where OUTPUT is an arbitrary named variable.) In Bash, «<word is used as a "here string", where word is expanded and supplied to the command on its standard input, similar to a heredoc. The less-than sign plus the equals sign (<=) is used for an approximation of the less-than-or-equal-to sign (≤). ASCII does not have a less-than-or-equal-to sign, but Unicode defines it at code point U+2264. In BASIC, Lisp-family languages, and C-family languages (including Java and C++), operator <= means "less than or equal to". In Sinclair BASIC it is