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Re:The surprisingly difficult problem of user-defined order ... by recursive on Saturday January 16, 2021 @12:00AM (#25800187)
Floating point numbers aren't special data types either.

You don't need decimal. It works fine with binary floating point. The reason they don't call it robust is that it requires re-balancing, but so does your proposal.

Re:The surprisingly difficult problem of user-defined order ... by spiffytech on Saturday January 16, 2021 @12:17AM (#25800252)
float/double data types have a hard requirement of periodic rebalancing to support unbounded repositions. Lexicographical sorting does not require rebalancing ever, though it may be performed as an optional storage/bandwidth optimization. That is a very meaningful distinction in my book.