The "greater than" symbol (>) is used to express a larger value. For example,
if (x > 10) means "if X is more than 10." Also called a "right arrow," it is also used to transfer the output of a process. For example, in DOS and Windows, the expression
dir *.* > names places the results of the directory listing into a file called NAMES.
In programming, double "greater than" characters (>>) are sometimes used as a right shift symbol, which shifts bits to the right by four bits.
The "greater than" is also used to close HTML and XML tags, while the "less than" (<) symbol is used to begin them, as in the following examples:
<HTML> </HTML>
<HEAD> </HEAD>
<TR> </TR>
<TD> </TD>
<B> </B>