Incomparable abominations
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
mertz at gnosis.cx
Sun Mar 23 23:58:31 EST 2003
|> the relation "1j < 2j" is self-evident and natural.
"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote previously:
|That is, however, a border case. Is 1+2j < 2+1j true or false?
True that the latter case has no natural order. But the former case
does. Likewise, I find this order natural:
"A" < "B"
And this order is completely arbitrary:
u"A" < unicodedata.lookup('HEBREW LETTER ALEF')
In what sense is the Roman alphabet "less than" the Hebrew alphabet?...
I have no hunch at all about where the "A"-like letter in Arabic, Greek,
Cyrillic, etc. would fall in the sequence, FWIW. Nor for various
A-diacritics that occur in Romanesque and Cryillicish alphabets. I
expect the order to be stable, but there is no "natural" answer to the
order.
And yet, both the character/unicode comparisons provide answers, while
the the complex comparisons raise exceptions.
To paraphrase the Timbot, Python seems to be aiming for a "principle of
maximum surprise!"
Yours, Lulu...
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