But of course the real solution is to use a strong and composable type for your ...

romac · on Oct 27, 2022

I like how Rust does it with the `Ordering` type and associated combinators: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/cmp/enum.Ordering.html

For two values `x` and `y` of the same type with fields `a` and `b`, this lets you compare on `a` first and then on `b` by writing

``` x.a.cmp(&y.a).then(x.b.cmp(&y.b)) ```

masklinn · on Oct 27, 2022

In fairness that was directly inspired by Haskell’s type of the same name: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.17.0.0/docs/Prelu...

im3w1l · on Oct 27, 2022

Not bad but I think python's way - using tuples is cleaner

  (x.a, x.b) < (y.a, y.b)

btw you can format as code by indenting two spaces.

tialaramex · on Oct 27, 2022

Indeed. 1) Get strong types 2) Make a type representing Ordering 3) Use this type everywhere for ordering things. Stop worrying about it.

Using -1, 0 and 1 to represent these feels like something that was a clever trick for low level code on a PDP-11 and hasn't been a good idea since the 1970s.