< (Less Than) (Transact-SQL)

Article
05/16/2013

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)

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