Doubt in EL operator

[Gurukant Desai]

Hi,
While appearing in Marcus Green's quiz question no.5 of EL chapter
<%int i = 1;int j =2;%>
${i < j}
${1 lt 2}

I was expecting answer as "true true" but right answer is "false true"

Can anyone please explain why ${i < j} will evaluate to false?

Thanks in advance
[ May 06, 2008: Message edited by: Gurukant Desai ]

[Musab Al-Rawi]

hi,

if i am not mistaken
<%int i = 1;int j =2;%>
these are variables not attributes. with the EL you can access attributes of four scopes.
so ${i} and ${j} are not defined ... so they are treated as zero.
So ${0 < 0} that's false because zero is equal to zero.

[Padma priya Gururajan]

Hi,
Any correct solutions to the problem?
Thanks in advance.

[Kumar Garlapati]

Musab is absolutely correct with bit change in the explaination, except that zero, it doesn't evaluates as zero. It evaluates as blank.

If it evaluates as zero, ${i==j}, should return true, but it's returning as false. i tried.

<%session.setAttribute("i","1");
session.setAttribute("j","2");%>
${i<j} 

output is : true
If we remove scriplet from above code, then output is : false.
it means that if i and j are not present in any scope, they are unable to evaluate as any values. so its evaluating as false.
[ May 06, 2008: Message edited by: Kumar Garlapati ]

[Musab Al-Rawi]

with EL null evaluates to false in boolean expressions and to zero in arithmetic operations.