New submission from Matthew Woodcraft <matthew@woodcraft.me.uk>: In CPython, the builtin max() and min() have the property that if there are items with equal keys, the first item is returned. From a quick look at their source, I think this is true for Jython and IronPython too. I propose making this a documented guarantee. On Python-dev, Raymond Hettinger said: << That seems like a reasonable request. This behavior has been around for a very long time is unlikely to change. Elsewhere, we've made efforts to document sort stability (i.e. sorted(), heapq.nlargest(), heapq.nsmallest, merge(), etc).
(<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2010-September/103543.html>)
I'm attaching a patch with a concrete suggestion for a change to functions.rst, modelled on the documentation of heapq.nlargest(). ---------- assignee: docs@python components: Documentation files: maxmin.patch keywords: patch messages: 115892 nosy: docs@python, mattheww priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: Document 'stability' of builtin min() and max() type: feature request Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file18802/maxmin.patch _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue9802> _______________________________________