Is there a technical reason to use > (<) instead of != when incrementing by 1 in a 'for' loop?

Question

I almost never see a for loop like this:

for (int i = 0; 5 != i; ++i)
{}

Is there a technical reason to use >

Answer 1

Using relational comparisons in such cases is more of a popular habit than anything else. It gained its popularity back in the times when such conceptual considerations as iterator categories and their comparability were not considered high priority.

I'd say that one should prefer to use equality comparisons instead of relational comparisons whenever possible, since equality comparisons impose less requirements on the values being compared. Being EqualityComparable is a lesser requirement than being LessThanComparable.

Another example that demonstrates the wider applicability of equality comparison in such contexts is the popular conundrum with implementing unsigned iteration down to 0. It can be done as

for (unsigned i = 42; i != -1; --i)
  ...

Note that the above is equally applicable to both signed and unsigned iteration, while the relational version breaks down with unsigned types.