grapes-lt-grapes: Perform less than comparison between two objects

In common: Solutions for Common Problems in Base R

Perform less than comparison between two objects

Description

The goal of the comparison operators is to return a TRUE or FALSE value when any two objects are compared. The operators provides a simple, reliable equality check that allows comparing of NULLs, NA values, and atomic data types without error. This operator performs a less than comparison.

For data frames, the operator will compare all values in all columns, and return a single TRUE if all values in the second data frame are less than the corresponding values in the first data frame.

Usage

x1 %lt% x2

Arguments

x1	The first object to compare
x2	The second object to compare

Value

A single TRUE or FALSE value indicating the results of the comparison.

See Also

Other operators: %eq%(), %ge%(), %gt%(), %le%(), %ne%(), %p%()

Examples

# Comparing of NULLs and NA
NULL %lt% NULL        # FALSE
NULL %lt% NA          # FALSE
NA %lt% NA            # FALSE
1 %lt% NULL           # FALSE
1 %lt% NA             # FALSE

# Comparing of atomic values
1 %lt% 1              # FALSE
2 %lt% 1              # FALSE
1 %lt% 2              # TRUE
"one" %lt% "one"      # FALSE
1 %lt% "one"          # FALSE
1 %lt% Sys.Date()     # TRUE (Sys.Date() is a number)

# Comparing of vectors
v1 <- c(0, 1, 2)
v2 <- c(1, 2, 3)
v3 <- c(2, 3, 4)
v1 %lt% v1            # FALSE
v1 %lt% v2            # TRUE
v2 %lt% v1            # FALSE
v2 %lt% v3            # TRUE

# Comparing of data frames
d1 <- data.frame(A = v1, B = v2)
d2 <- data.frame(A = v2, B = v3)
d1 %lt% d1            # FALSE
d1 %lt% d2            # TRUE
d2 %lt% d1            # FALSE

# Mixing it up
d1 %lt% NULL          # FALSE
v1 %lt% d1            # FALSE
1 %lt% v1             # FALSE

common documentation built on Dec. 8, 2025, 9:06 a.m.