[noobly]

is there really a naming distinction between ‘>’ and ‘<‘? Is only one really the ‘greater’ than sign? Interesting if so! I always assumed it was context dependent (i.e x < 10 could be said 10 is greater than x, so it’s still acting as a greater than sign - but I see why I’m probably wrong here). I was interested in seeing an arguement like another poster made, where notation be like x = [0,1] might be proposed.

[deathanatos]

If you read

  Pull the lever when x < 0

aloud, you must read it as "Pull the lever when x is less than zero." Thus, "<" is "less than", and ">" is "greater than", for that reason specifically.

Also, Unicode calls it U+003C LESS-THAN SIGN and U+003E GREATER-THAN SIGN.

At least, that's the terms that the article is using, and I think there's sufficient context to identify that, and go along w/ it.

[noobly]

Well, and I don’t mean to be strictly pebdabtic, but you could read it as “when 0 is greater than x”, but of course it takes more overhead and I see why I was wrong. Thanks, it’s getting late today so I’m glad I managed to learn something before the days up.

[privong]

> is there really a distinction between ‘>’ and ‘<‘? Is only one really the ‘greater’ than sign?

The convention I've always seen is that `>` is "greater than" and `<` is "less than". Reading from left to right `x > 2` is "x is greater than 2" and `2 < x` is "2 is less than x". Functionally the same, yes, but with a distinction in the way the comparison is done (reading left to right). So with a preferred/dominant reading direction I would consider them different. This would be important if reading/describing a line of code to someone where it might be read/written left to right.

I don't know if the names are reversed in languages that are read right to left?

[gbear605]

By convention, math is always left to right regardless of the direction of the script it's in, so presumably the operators do the same.

[wyldfire]

Yes, there absolutely is. Because we write so many languages left-to-right, '>' denotes 'greater than'. Perhaps right-to-left written languages have mathematical comparison operators with opposite names.

[gbear605]

By convention, math is always left to right regardless of the direction of the script it's in, so presumably the operators do the same.

[wyldfire]

Yeah, I was intending to refer to a time prior to the establishment of those conventions. Presumably those societies with right-to-left writing had independent mathematics with comparison operators. If they named them, there might be opposite conventions back then.