Re: BUG in expr command

[Bob Proulx]

>    I would kindly bring to your notice an error in the functionality of the 
> shell program 'expr'. The program malfunctions whenever we try to evaluate an 
> expression containing the symbols '<' or '>'. After hours of debugging, I 
> noticed that the Unix shell by default uses these symbols for redirection, so 
> the command never gets to see these symbols. So, inspite of the mention of 
> the symbols in the manual documenation and the in-file documentation, i.e. 
> using the 'expr --help' command, the functionality of those is not realised.

Sorry you had such difficulty using expr.  The command is one of the
oldest of the unix command set and has a syntax required by legacy
programs.

The man page for expr shows:

       Beware  that  many  operators need to be escaped or quoted
       for shells.

Try this:

  expr 2 '<' 3

Bob