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< (Less Than) (Transact-SQL)

SQL Server 2012

Compares two expressions (a comparison operator). When you compare nonnull expressions, the result is TRUE if the left operand has a value lower than the right operand; otherwise, the result is FALSE. If either or both operands are NULL, see the topic SET ANSI_NULLS (Transact-SQL).

Topic link icon Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

expression < expression

Arguments

expression: Is any valid expression. Both expressions must have implicitly convertible data types. The conversion depends on the rules of data type precedence.

Result Types

Boolean

Examples

A. Using < in a simple query

The following example returns all rows in the HumanResources.Department table that have a value in DepartmentID that is less than the value 3.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
SELECT DepartmentID, Name
FROM HumanResources.Department
WHERE DepartmentID < 3
ORDER BY DepartmentID;

Here is the result set.

DepartmentID Name
------------ --------------------------------------------------
1            Engineering
2            Tool Design

(2 row(s) affected)

B. Using < to compare two variables

DECLARE @a int = 45, @b int = 40;
SELECT IIF ( @a < @b, 'TRUE', 'FALSE' ) AS Result;

Here is the result set.

Result
------
FALSE

(1 row(s) affected)

Reference

IIF (Transact-SQL)

Data Types (Transact-SQL)

Operators (Transact-SQL)

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