Less - than sign - wikipedia Less - than sign For the use of the `` < '' sign as punctuation, see Bracket § Angle brackets. The less - than sign is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal - length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the left, <, has been found in documents dated as far back as the 1560s. In typical mathematical usage, the less - than sign is typically placed between the two values being compared and signals that the first number is less than the second number. Examples of typical usage include 1⁄2 < 1 and − 2 < 1. Since the development of computer programming languages, the less - than sign and the greater - than sign have been repurposed for a range of uses and operations. Contents 1 Computing 1.1 Programming language 1.2 Double less - than sign 1.3 Triple less - than sign 1.4 Less - than sign plus equals sign 1.5 Less - than sign plus Hyphen - minus 1.6 Shell scripts 1.7 Spaceship operator 1.8 HTML 2 Mathematics 3 See also Computing The less - than sign ( < ) is an original ASCII character ( hex 3C, decimal 60 ). The less - than sign is used for an approximation of the opening angle bracket ( ⟨ ). ASCII does not have angle brackets. Programming language In BASIC, Lisp - family languages, and C - family languages ( including Java and C++ ), operator < means `` less than ''. In Coldfusion, operator. lt. means `` less than ''. In Fortran, operator. LT. means `` less than '' ; later versions allow <. In Bourne shell, operator - lt means `` less than ''. Double less - than sign The double less - than sign ( < < ) is used for an approximation of the much-less - than sign ( ≪ ) or of the opening guillemet ( `` ). ASCII does not have much-less - than sign. In Bash, Perl, and Ruby, operator < < EOF ( where `` EOF '' is an arbitrary string, but commonly `` EOF '' denoting `` end of file '' ) is used to denote the beginning of a here document. In C and C++, operator < < represents a binary left shift. In the C++ Standard Library, operator < <, when applied on an output stream, acts as insertion operator and performs an output operation on the stream. Triple less - than sign In PHP, operator < < < OUTPUT is used to denote the beginning of a heredoc statement ( where OUTPUT is an arbitrary named variable. ) In Bash, < < < word is used as a `` here string '', where word is expanded and supplied to the command on its standard input, similar to a heredoc. Less - than sign plus equals sign The less - than sign plus the equals sign ( < = ) is used for an approximation of the less - than - or - equal - to sign ( ≤ ). ASCII does not have a less - than - or - equal - to sign, but Unicode defines it at code point U + 2264. In BASIC, Lisp - family languages, and C - family languages ( including Java and C++ ), operator < = means `` less than or equal to ''. In Sinclair BASIC it is encoded as a single - byte code point token. In Fortran, operator. LE. means `` less than or equal to ''. In Bourne shell and Windows PowerShell, the operator - le means `` less than or equal to ''. Less - than sign plus hyphen - minus In the R programming language, the less - than sign is used in conjunction with a hyphen - minus to create an arrow ( < - ), this can be used as the left assignment operator. Shell scripts In Bourne shell ( and many other shells ), less - than sign is used to redirect input from a file. Less - than plus ampersand ( < & ) is used to redirect from a file descriptor. Spaceship operator Less - than sign is used in the spaceship operator. HTML In HTML ( and SGML and XML ), the less - than sign is used at the beginning of tags. The less - than sign may be included with &lt ;. The less - than - or - equal - to sign may be included with &le ;. Mathematics In an inequality, the less - than sign always `` points '' to the smaller number. Put another way, the `` jaws '' ( the wider section of the symbol ) always direct to the larger number. See also Inequality ( mathematics ) Greater - than sign Relational operator Much-less - than sign Guillemet Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Less-than_sign&oldid=813177773 '' Categories : Typographical symbols Talk Contents About Wikipedia Čeština Dansk Deutsch Svenska Edit links This page was last edited on 2 December 2017, at 06 : 49. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: what is a less than sign look like
Answer: <