None :)
Mark Jackson
mjackson at wc.eso.mc.xerox.com
Wed Apr 25 10:05:46 EDT 2001
Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk> writes:
> Hans Kristian Ruud <hans at inenco.no> writes:
>
> > When an element in a sequence s is None,
> > max (s) will return None:
>
> All numeric types compare lower than all other types. So
> max([0,1L,2.0,""]) is "", for instance.
>
> http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ref/comparisons.html
>
> has the juice, including the statement that this behaviour is "likely
> to change" in the future.
It's probably worth reinforcing that warning with the observation that
this behavior has, in fact, changed in the past. For example, None used
to compare lower:
Python 1.4 (Nov 17 1997) [GCC 2.7.2.2]
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> s = [1.4, 2.5, None, 4354549999L]
>>> max(s)
4354549999L
>>> min(s)
>>>
And my favorite example: through 1.5.1, if
>>> a = 2
>>> b = []
>>> c = 1L
then
>>> a < b < c < a
returned 1 (true).
one-person's-absurd-is-another-person's-appealingly-surreal-ly y'rs,
--
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
Popular memory may be short, but it is nothing
compared with the amnesia of experts.
- Adam Gopnik
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