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An angle bracket opening to the right, stating that the left value is smaller.
Also known as: Left angle bracket, Arrow pointing left
The less-than sign states that the quantity on its left is smaller than the one on its right. Thomas Harriot introduced it together with the greater-than sign in a work published in 1631, ten years after his death.
Is encoded as U+003C LESS-THAN SIGN, a Basic Latin character rather than a mathematical operator, because it predates the block and sits on the keyboard.
Contexts: Mathematics
States that the value on its left is strictly smaller than the value on its right.
Contexts: Mathematics
Was introduced along with the greater-than sign in Thomas Harriot's Artis Analyticae Praxis of 1631, a posthumous work, and displaced several competing notations over the following century.
Contexts: Mathematics
Opens a tag in HTML and XML, where it is the character that must be escaped as < to be shown literally — the reason unescaped input is a cross-site-scripting risk.
Contexts: Software
Two short straight strokes meeting at a point on the left and opening out towards the right, forming a horizontal wedge.
Both are horizontal wedges opening rightward, in unrelated fields.
Which way the wedge opens is the entire distinction, and it is reversed easily.
Both open rightwards; the inequality is a sharp wedge and the subset sign a rounded curve.
The same character used for a different job: comparison in mathematics, input redirection in a shell.
The same wedge reversed; the two are mirror images and state opposite orderings.