When writing conditional statements, sometimes we need to use different types of operators to compare values. These operators are called comparison operators.
Here is a list of some handy comparison operators and their syntax:
- Less than:
<
- Greater than:
>
- Less than or equal to:
<=
- Greater than or equal to:
>=
- Is equal to:
===
- Is not equal to:
!==
Comparison operators compare the value on the left with the value on the right. For instance:
10 < 12 // Evaluates to true
It can be helpful to think of comparison statements as questions. When the answer is “yes”, the statement evaluates to true
, and when the answer is “no”, the statement evaluates to false
. The code above would be asking: is 10 less than 12? Yes! So 10 < 12
evaluates to true
.
We can also use comparison operators on different data types like strings:
'apples' === 'oranges' // false
In the example above, we’re using the identity operator (===
) to check if the string 'apples'
is the same as the string 'oranges'
. Since the two strings are not the same, the comparison statement evaluates to false
.
All comparison statements evaluate to either true
or false
and are made up of:
- Two values that will be compared.
- An operator that separates the values and compares them accordingly (
>
,<
,<=
,>=
,===
,!==
).
Let’s practice using these comparison operators!
Instructions
Using let
, create a variable named hungerLevel
and set it equal to 7
.
Write an if...else
statement using a comparison operator. The condition should check if hungerLevel
is greater than 7
. If so, the conditional statement should log, 'Time to eat!'
. Otherwise, it should log 'We can eat later!'
.
After you press run, play around with the condition by tweaking the comparison of hungerLevel
by using different operators such as <=
,>=
,>
, and <
.