SQL - Less than (<) Operator

The SQL < (less than) operator checks if the value of left operand is less than the value of right operand and returns true if the condition is true, false otherwise.

Syntax

The syntax for using less than operator is given below:

expression < expression  

Parameters

Example 1:

The example below shows the usage of less than operator:

SELECT 10 < 10;
Result: 0

SELECT 10.0 < 10;
Result: 0

SELECT 10 < 20;
Result: 1

SELECT 'abc' < 'abc';
Result: 0

SELECT 'abc' < 'xyz';
Result: 1

Example 2:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

To select records of table where Age of the person is less than 27, the query is given below.

SELECT * FROM Employee
WHERE Age < 27;

The query will produce following result: