Comparison Operators
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## Comparison Operators

The following standard comparison operators are supported in GEL and have the obvious meaning: `==`, `>=`, `<=`, `!=`, `<>`, `<`, `>`. They return `true` or `false`. The operators `!=` and `<>` are the same thing and mean "is not equal to". GEL also supports the operator `<=>`, which returns -1 if left side is smaller, 0 if both sides are equal, 1 if left side is larger.

Normally `=` is translated to `==` if it happens to be somewhere where GEL is expecting a condition such as in the if condition. For example

    if a=b then c
    if a==b then c

are the same thing in GEL. However you should really use `==` or `:=` when you want to compare or assign respectively if you want your code to be easy to read and to avoid mistakes.

All the comparison operators (except for the `<=>` operator, which behaves normally), are not strictly binary operators, they can in fact be grouped in the normal mathematical way, e.g.: (`1<x<=y<5`) is a legal boolean expression and means just what it should, that is (1<x and x≤y and y<5)

To build up logical expressions use the words `not`, `and`, `or`, `xor`. The operators `or` and `and` are special beasts as they evaluate their arguments one by one, so the usual trick for conditional evaluation works here as well. For example, `1 or a=1` will not set `a=1` since the first argument was true.

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