comparing strings and ints

[Mark H.H. Montague]

Does anyone know why it is not a type error to compare a string and an
int with '>' ?  For example, I just spent over an hour debugging code
that essentially did this:

>>> 45 > '0'
0

Of course, the '0' was a variable read in from a file, which I forgot
to convert to a string.  Bad old perl habits.  But I'm having a hard
time imagining a situation where someone would be intentionally and
meaningfully comparing a string and an int.

Any ideas?

-mm