$DateAttribute < "date"
Gathers all notes whose $DateAttribute value is before the given date. The left-side date cannot be less than 'never'.
WARNING: unlike an equals comparison the time element of the date/time is used. If $DateA is 28 November 2012 09:00 and $DateB is 28 November 2012 12:00 then:
$DateA < $DateB is true
whilst
$DateA == $DateB is true
This is because the former takes time into account and the latter does not.
$NumberAttribute < number
Gathers all notes whose $NumberAttribute value is smaller than the given number.
Other data types…
Boolean. A true is always greater than false.
Color. Tinderbox does not perform greater/less than comparisons on Color-type attributes.
Sets/Lists. Tinderbox does not perform greater/less than comparisons on Set-type and List-type attributes.
String. A lexical comparison is done of each string character by character, i.e. the ASCII value of each first character, then each second character, etc. Uppercase characters < lowercase < numbers. For other characters, accents, etc., comparisons are likely to not meet linguistic expectation as the values will be based on Unicode sort order. Thus:
"dog" > "cat"
"dog" > "Dog"
"dogs" > "dog"
"dogs" > "dogma"
"dogs" < "døg" <-- NOTE!