Relational Operators

A relational operator is a binary operator that compares two values. The following symbols are used in Java as relational operators:

<   less than  
>   greater than  
<=  less than or equal to  
>=  greater than or equal to  
==  equal to  
!=  not equal to

A relational operator is used to compare two values, resulting in a relational expression. For example:

number > 16        grade == 'F'        passing >= 60 

The result of a relational expression is a boolean value of either true or false.

When character data is compared, the ASCII code values are used to determine the answer. The following expressions result in the answers given:

'A' < 'B'    evaluates as true, (65 < 66)
'd' < 'a'    evaluates as false, (100 < 97)
't' < 'X'    evaluates as false, (116 < 88)

In the last example, you must remember that upper case letters come first in the ASCII collating sequence; the lower case letters follow after and consequently have larger ASCII values than do upper case ('A' = 65, 'a' = 97).