why less than expression converts into less than or equal to expression in gcc

I am working on code optimization and going through gcc internals. I wrote a simple expression in my program and I checked the gimple representation of that expression and I got stuck why gcc had done this. Say I have an expression :

if(i < 9)

then in the gimple representation it will be converted to

if(i <= 8)

I dont know why gcc do this. Is it some kind of optimization, if yes then can anyone tell me how it can optimize our program?

The canonalisation helps to detect CommonSubExpressions, such as:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
unsigned u, pos;
char buff[40];

for (u=pos=0; u < 10; u++) {
        buff[pos++] = (u <5) ? 'A' + u : 'a' + u;
        buff[pos++] = (u <=4) ? '0' + u : 'A' + u;
        }
buff[pos++] = 0;
printf("=%s=\n", buff);
return 0;
}

GCC -O1 will compile this into:

         ...
        movl    $1, %edx
        movl    $65, %ecx
.L4:
        cmpl    $4, %eax
        ja      .L2
        movb    %cl, (%rsi)
        leal    48(%rax), %r8d
        jmp     .L3
.L2:
        leal    97(%rax), %edi
        movb    %dil, (%rsi)
        movl    %ecx, %r8d
.L3:
        mov     %edx, %edi
        movb    %r8b, (%rsp,%rdi)
        addl    $1, %eax
        addl    $1, %ecx
        addl    $2, %edx
        addq    $2, %rsi
        cmpl    $10, %eax
        jne     .L4
        movb    $0, 20(%rsp)
        movq    %rsp, %rdx
        movl    $.LC0, %esi
        movl    $1, %edi
        movl    $0, %eax
        call    __printf_chk
         ...

GCC -O2 will actually remove the entire loop and replace it by a stream of assignments.