Immediate Child selector in LESS

The correct syntax would be following while using '&' would be redundant here.

.panel{
   > .control{
   }
}

According to less guidelines, '&' is used to parameterize ancestors (but there is no such need here). In this less example, &:hover is essential over :hover otherwise it would result in syntactic error. However, there is no such syntactic requirement for using '&' here. Otherwise all nestings would require '&' as they are essentially referring to parent.

The official way:

.panel {
  & > .control {
    ...
  }
}

& always refers to the current selector.

See http://lesscss.org/features/#features-overview-feature-nested-rules

UPDATE

Actually, the code in the original question works fine. You can just stick with the > child selector.

---

Found the answer.

.panel {
    ...
    >.control {
        ...
    }
}

Note the lack of space between ">" and ".", otherwise it won't work.