Where is the IE variable stored in html conditional statements?

Question

I've seen code like

<!--[if IE]> ... html tags <![end if]-->

I was wondering, where is the IE variable that's looked at stored? When the browser looks at if IE, which variable is it looking at to check if IE, and can it be accessed somehow?

Answer 1

It's a string value that corresponds to the version of internet explorer being used.

Here are some other values,

You can read more about the syntax here