MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004 - ACTIONSCRIPT - Page 254

254 Chapter 12: ActionScript Dictionary
< (less than)
Availability
Flash Player 4; Flash Player 5. In Flash 5 and later, the < (less than) operator is a comparison
operator capable of handling various data types. In Flash 4,
< is an numeric operator. Flash 4 files
brought into the Flash 5 or later authoring environment undergo a conversion process to
maintain data type integrity. The following illustrates the conversion of a Flash 4 file containing a
numeric quality comparison.
Flash 4 file:
x < y
Converted Flash 5 or later file:
Number(x) < Number(y)
Usage
expression1 < expression2
Parameters
expression1,expression2
A number or string.
Description
Operator (comparison); compares two expressions and determines whether expression1 is less
than
expression2; if so, the operator returns true. If expression1 is greater than or equal to
expression2, the operator returns false. String expressions are evaluated using alphabetical
order; all capital letters come before lowercase letters.
Example
The following examples illustrate true and false returns for both numeric and string
comparisons.
3 < 10;
// true
10 < 3;
// false
"Allen" < "Jack";
// true
"Jack" < "Allen";
// false
"11" < "3";
//true
"11" < 3;
// numeric comparison
// false
"C" < "abc";
// false
"A" < "a";
// true