
Alex Martelli <aleax@aleax.it>:
So, lists whose elements have LESS in common (by being of widely different types) are more likely to be sortable than lists some of whose elements have in common the fact of being numbers (if one or more of those numbers are complex).
As I think I've mentioned before, Python really needs two different kinds of comparison: one which does whatever makes sense for objects of compatible types (and which need not be supported by all types), and another which imposes an arbitrary order on all objects. When sorting a list, you would have to specify which kind of ordering you wanted. Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+