Strict less than operator in LDAP search filter?

Question

In all references on LDAP search filter operator I find <= for "less than or equal to" and >= for "greater than or equal to."

Is there really no "strictly less than" operator? Must I write attribute < threshold as the following? (Threshold is a fixed value.)

(&(attribute <= threshold)(!(attribute = threshold))) 

In my current case the attribute values are integers that represent dates, e.g. 20120217161853 for 2012-02-17 16:18:53.

Answer 1

Another simple workaround would to to invert the condition. If you need

(attribute < threshold)

Then this could also be written as

!(attribute >= threshold)