Relational Operators
Perl has two classes of relational operators. One class operates on numeric values, the other on string values, as shown in Table 3.5.
Table 3-5. Relational Operators
| Numeric | String | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
> | gt | Greater than |
>= | ge | Greater than or equal to |
< | lt | Less than |
<= | le | Less than or equal to |
These operators return 1 for true
and "" for false. Note that relational operators are nonassociating,
which means that $a < $b < $c is a syntax
error.
In the absence of locale declarations, string comparisons are based on the ASCII/Unicode collating sequences, and, unlike in some computer languages, trailing spaces count in the comparison. With a locale declaration, the collation order specified by the locale is used. (Locale-based collation mechanisms may or may not interact well with the Unicode collation mechanisms currently in development.)
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