User Guide

Operators 169
< less than operator
expression1 < expression2
Compares two expressions and determines whether expression1 is less than expression2; if
so, the operator returns
true. If expression1 is greater than or equal to expression2, the
operator returns
false. String expressions are evaluated using alphabetical order; all capital
letters come before lowercase letters.
Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 4 - In Flash 4,
< is a numeric operator. In Flash 5
and later, the
< (less than) operator is a comparison operator capable of handling various data
types. Flash 4 files that are brought into the Flash 5 or later authoring environment undergo a
conversion process to maintain data type integrity. The following illustrates the conversion of
a Flash 4 file containing a numeric quality comparison.
Flash 4 file:
x < y
Converted Flash 5 or later file: Number(x) < Number(y)
Operands
expression1 : Number - A number or string.
expression2 : Number - A number or string.
Returns
Boolean - The Boolean result of the comparison.
Example
The following examples show
true and false returns for both numeric and string
comparisons:
trace(3 < 10); // true
trace(10 < 3); // false
trace("Allen" < "Jack"); // true
trace("Jack" < "Allen"); //false
trace("11" < "3"); // true
trace("11" < 3); // false (numeric comparison)
trace("C" < "abc"); // true
trace("A" < "a"); // true