Good point, for those who need to implement a slick compareFunction for numbers, Math.sign is great:

  [min, num, max].sort((a, b) => Math.sign(a - b))[1]

An entirely different alternative is poor man's match:

  switch (true) {
  case num > max: return max;
  case num < min: return min;
  default: return num;
  }

Why sign though? I always write my sorts like this.

    .sort((a, b) => a - b)

Is there a better way to grab a reference to the subtraction operator?

I assume you're referring to a point-free reference.

Only by defining a `const subtract = (a, b) => a - b;`, which isn't really point-free.

Or by using a different language.

Wait, really? I just had to double-check my one JS project for bugs and either I used to know this gotcha or I got lucky. My sort()-ing needed to handle NaNs carefully so I was already using custom comparators.

"lexicographically" is a better descriptor than "alphabetically", since it's sorting by UTF-8 code point value.

It sorts by UTF-16 code unit.

Of course, my bad.

Very good point. I thought of it more as pseudocode.

imho a very elegant solution and probably works in most languages, I was surprised by JavaScript's behaviour myself

For a real fun headscratcher consider [ '9', '10', '11', '12', '13' ].map(parseInt)

Thank you for this exercise! I figured it out!

[ROT 13] spoiler: cnefrVag frpbaq nethzrag vf onfr, znc frpbaq nethzrag vf vaqrk va neenl. 10 vf gur frpbaq nethzrag, vaqrk 1. cnefrVag(10, 1) unf vyyrtny onfr

[0] https://rot13.com/