Less-than sign Less-than sign The "less-than sign" is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal-length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the left, <, has been found in documents dated as far back as the 1560s. In typical mathematical usage, the less-than sign is typically placed between the two values being compared and signals that the first number is less than the second number. Examples of typical usage include "½ < 1" and "−2 < 1". Since the development of computer programming languages, the less-than sign and the greater-than sign have
Less-than sign encoded as a single-byte code point token. In Fortran, operator .LE. means "less than or equal to". In Bourne shell and Windows PowerShell, the operator -le means "less than or equal to". In the R programming language, the less-than sign is used in conjunction with a hyphen-minus to create an arrow (codice_1), this can be used as the left assignment operator. In Bourne shell (and many other shells), less-than sign is used to redirect input from a file. Less-than plus ampersand (<&) is used to redirect from a file descriptor. Less-than sign is used in the spaceship operator. In HTML