Trying to parse some Java code in a middleware tool but somehow determining which numeric value in a string is larger does not work.

The input variables are:
- TRDT and VLDT are strings and contain the date in format YYYYMMDD
- OWOVHE_R contains a string read from a file
- oOWOVHE contains the output value
- iOWOVHE contains the input value

The below JAVA code is called for every record read of a...