What do < and > stand for?
Advertisement
What do < and > stand for?
Question
I know that the entities <
and >
are used for <
and >
, but I am curious what these names stand for.
Does <
stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?
2017/10/31
Accepted Answer
<
stands for the less-than sign:<
>
stands for the greater-than sign:>
≤
stands for the less-than or equals sign:≤
≥
stands for the greater-than or equals sign:≥
2020/07/17
Read more… Read less…
They're used to explicitly define less than and greater than symbols. If one wanted to type out <html>
and not have it be a tag in the HTML, one would use them. An alternate way is to wrap the <code>
element around code to not run into that.
They can also be used to present mathematical operators.
<!ENTITY lt CDATA "<" -- less-than sign, U+003C ISOnum -->
<!ENTITY gt CDATA ">" -- greater-than sign, U+003E ISOnum -->
2011/02/21
Others have noted the correct answer, but have not clearly explained the all-important reason:
- why do we need this?
What do < and > stand for?
<
stands for the<
sign. Just remember: lt == less than>
stands for the>
Just remember: gt == greater than
Why can’t we simply use the <
and >
characters in HTML?
- This is because the
>
and<
characters are ‘reserved’ characters in HTML. - HTML is a mark up language: The
<
and>
are used to denote the starting and ending of different attributes: e.g.<h1>
and not for the displaying of the greater than or less than symbols. But what if you wanted to actually display those symbols? You would simply use<
and>
and the browser will know exactly how to display it.
2019/03/01
Licensed under CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with Stack Overflow
Email: [email protected]