[Python-ideas] [Python-Dev] minmax() function returning (minimum, maximum) tuple of a sequence

[Ron Adam]

On 10/15/2010 02:04 PM, Arnaud Delobelle wrote:

>> Because it would always interpret a list of values as a single item.
>>
>> This function looks at args and if its a single value without an "__iter__"
>> method, it passes it to min as min([value], **kwds) instead of min(value,
>> **kwds).
>
> But there are many iterable objects which are also comparable (hence
> it makes sense to consider their min/max), for example strings.
>
> So we get:
>
>       xmin("foo", "bar", "baz") == "bar"
>       xmin("foo", "bar") == "bar"
>
> but:
>
>      xmin("foo") == "f"
>
> This will create havoc in your running min routine.
>
> (Notice the same will hold for min() but at least you know that min(x)
> considers x as an iterable and complains if it isn't)

Yes

There doesn't seem to be a way to generalize min/max in a way to handle all 
the cases without knowing the context.

So in a coroutine version of Tals class, you would need to pass a hint 
along with the value.

Ron