On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 09:57:03AM +0000, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote: > The algorithm is probably described somewhere in the documentation > but my understanding is that it looks something like this(in pdeudo code):
List, tuple and string comparisons are defined as lexicographical order: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#comparing-sequences-and-other-types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicographical_order That's a fancy way of saying "dictionary order". That means that lists are ordered in the same way that words are ordered in the dictionary: - match up letters in the word (items in the list) in pairs; - so long as the pairs of letters (items) are equal, keep going; - as soon as you hit a pair that aren't equal, the order of that pair determines the order of the words (lists); - if one word runs out of letters (list runs out of items), then it comes first; - if all the pairs are equal, the words (lists) are equal. Some examples: [0, 1, 2] < [1, 2, 3] because 0 < 1 [0, 1, 2] < [0, 1, 2, 3] because the first three items are equal but the first list is shorter. [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] < [0, 1, 999] because 2 < 999 [0, 999, 999, 999] < [1, 2] because 0 < 1 -- Steve _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
