python max()字符串的比较_为什么python max（'a'，5）返回字符串值？

Tracing back a ValueError: cannot convert float NaN to integer I found out that the line:

max('a', 5)

max(5, 'a')

will return a instead of 5.

In the above case I used the example string a but in my actual case the string is a NaN (the result of a fitting process that failed to converge).

What is the rationale behind this behaviour? Why doesn't python recognize automatically that there's a string there and that it should return the number?

Even more curious is that min() does work as expected since:

min('a', 5)

min(5, 'a')

returns 5.

解决方案

In Python 2, numeric values always sort before strings and almost all other types:

>>> sorted(['a', 5])

[5, 'a']

Numbers then, are considered smaller than strings. When using max(), that means the string is picked over a number.

That numbers are smaller is an arbitrary implementation choice. See the Comparisons documentation:

The operators , ==, >=, <=, and != compare the values of two objects. The objects need not have the same type. If both are numbers, they are converted to a common type. Otherwise, objects of different types always compare unequal, and are ordered consistently but arbitrarily.

Bold emphasis mine.

Python 2 tried real hard to make heterogenous types sortable, which has caused a lot of hard to debug problems, such as programmers trying to compare integers with strings and getting unexpected results. Python 3 corrected this mistake; you'll get a TypeError instead:

>>> max(5, 'a')

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "", line 1, in

TypeError: unorderable types: str() > int()