Comparisons of incompatible types

[BartC]

"Carl Banks" <pavlovevidence at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:bf4be9a7-a079-4454-9969-60e9be305a03 at k14g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 6, 4:17 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve
> +comp.lang.pyt... at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> On Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:59:12 -0800, TomF wrote:
>> > I'm aggravated by this behavior in python:
>>
>> > x = "4"
>> > print x < 7    # prints False
>> > I can't imagine why this design decision was made.
>>
>> You've never needed to deal with an heterogeneous list?
>>
>> data = ["Fred", "Barney", 2, 1, None]
>> data.sort()
>
> Not once, ever.
>
>
>> Nevertheless, I agree that in hindsight, the ability to sort such lists
>> is not as important as the consistency of comparisons.
>
> I think that feeling the need to sort non-homogenous lists is
> indictative of bad design.

Using a simple "<" comparison, perhaps. But can't a list be sorted by other 
criteria? For example, by comparing the string representations of each 
element.

So some sorts will make sense, and others (such as "<" or ">") won't.

-- 
Bartc