I know that the entities < and > are used for < and >, but I am curious what these names stand for.
Does < stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?
<stands for the less-than sign ( < )>stands for the greater-than sign ( > )≤stands for the less-than or equals sign ( ≤ )≥stands for the greater-than or equals sign ( ≥ )
< Less than: <
> Greater than: >
They're used to explicitly define less than and greater than symbols. If one wanted to type out <html> and not have it be a tag in the HTML, one would use them. An alternate way is to wrap the <code> element around code to not run into that.
They can also be used to present mathematical operators.
<!ENTITY lt CDATA "<" -- less-than sign, U+003C ISOnum -->
<!ENTITY gt CDATA ">" -- greater-than sign, U+003E ISOnum -->
< == lesser-than == <
> == greater-than == >
< = less than <, > = greater than >
> and < is a character entity reference for the > and < character in HTML.
It is not possible to use the less than (<) or greater than (>) signs in your file, because the browser will mix them with tags.
for these difficulties you can use entity names(>) and entity numbers(<).
Others have noted the correct answer, but have not clearly explained the all-important reason:
- why do we need this?
What do < and > stand for?
<stands for the<sign. Just remember: lt == less than>stands for the>Just remember: gt == greater than
Why can’t we simply use the < and > characters in HTML?
- This is because the
>and<characters are ‘reserved’ characters in HTML. - HTML is a mark up language: The
<and>are used to denote the starting and ending of different attributes: e.g.<h1>and not for the displaying of the greater than or less than symbols. But what if you wanted to actually display those symbols? You would simply use<and>and the browser will know exactly how to display it.
in rails:
<= this is <=
=> this is =>
< stands for lesser than (<) symbol and, the > sign stands for greater than (>) symbol.
For more information on HTML Entities, visit this link:
https://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_entities.asp
Hope my answer was helpful to you... Have a great day ahead...
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5068951/what-do-lt-and-gt-stand-for