User Guide

< (less than) 73
< (less than)
Availability
Flash Player 4; Flash Player 5. In Flash 5 and later, the < (less than) operator is a comparison
operator capable of handling various data types. In Flash 4,
< is an numeric operator. 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)
Usage
expression1 < expression2
Parameters
expression1,expression2
A number or string.
Returns
A Boolean value.
Description
Operator (comparison); 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.
For more information, see “Operator precedence and associativity” in Using ActionScript in Flash.
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