General Format:
Note that the required relational characters "<" , ">", and "=" are not underlined, to avoid confusion with other symbols such as " ? ".
General Rules:
- For operands whose class is numeric a comparison is made with respect to the algebraic value of the operands. The length of the literal or arithmetic expression operands in terms of number of digits represented, is not significant. Zero is considered a unique value regardless of the sign.
- Comparison of these operands is permitted regardless of the manner in which their usage is described. Unsigned numeric operands are considered positive for purposes of comparison.
- Numeric-edited items are of class alphanumeric, and comparisons involving them follow the rules for comparison of nonnumeric operands, as below.
