Why can't Swift's greater-than or less-than operators compare optionals when the equality operators can?

Question

In Swift 3, this is a compile error, if I use > or <

let a: Int?
guard a > 0 else {return}
guard a < 0 else {return}
         


        

Answer 1

This is because Int and Int? are 2 different things.

According to the documentation, Int has overloads for < and > and some other operators, while Optional only has overloads for == and !=, see the documentation on Optional, the section talking about Comparing Optional Values.