Re:The 2,500 year old history of why Python’s all([]) return...
by JadeNB on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:08PM
(#22618844)
The reaction to this point seems to have been dismissive (ironic in a thread that started with a complaint about dismissing small distinctions!), but I think the distinction you're making is an important one. In Haskell, it's the difference between `minimum` and `minimumBy`.
The point about strings is different. It doesn't make sense in general to speak of the minimum string in a list, or, more generally, the minimum of a partially ordered set; but it does make perfectly good sense to sort a partially ordered set, with the idea that there are multiple correct sorts when elements are incomparable. That, of course, is where the notion of a stable sort becomes important.
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.12.0.0/docs/GHC-L...
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.12.0.0/docs/Data-...
The point about strings is different. It doesn't make sense in general to speak of the minimum string in a list, or, more generally, the minimum of a partially ordered set; but it does make perfectly good sense to sort a partially ordered set, with the idea that there are multiple correct sorts when elements are incomparable. That, of course, is where the notion of a stable sort becomes important.