[Python-Dev] PEP 326 (quick location possibility) (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one at comcast.net
Thu Jan 29 13:49:52 EST 2004

[Skip]

Perhaps a stupid observation, but empty lists, dicts, strings and tuples appear to compare larger than any int or float:

Why do you presume it's numbers that are getting compared in a min/max search loop? Sometimes it's tuples, sometimes lists, sometimes strings, sometimes instances of a user-defined class (etc).

... I realize this is implementation-dependent (and I'm sure Tim already knows all this stuff). People wanting absolute min and max objects could use something like the above to generate such stuff when needed.

Sorry, they can't. If so happens that every string compares less than every tuple -- you really expect sensible code to be written that way? The brittleness compounds if you try. Extending that example, it so happens that every Unicode string compares larger than every tuple, so apart from the inherent obscurity of relying on accidental crap like that, it can break when your input data changes a little.

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