How does the max() function work on list of strings in python?

I have a list:

list1 = [123, 'xyz', 'zara', 'abc']
print "Max value element : ", max(list1);

It gives:

Max value element : zara

Please also explain how it perform comparison on list of strings and list of numbers.

Answer

This is actually a good question and the answer varies depending on whether you’re on python2.x or python3.x … And which python implementation you’re using¹.

See here for a description of how python compares different types. The link says pretty much all that you need to know, but as a quick summary:

• comparison of objects of the same type acts as you’d expect.
• comparison of objects of different type are ordered by their type name on python2.x and raise an error on python3.x (Unless a custom comparison operator is defined.)
• old style classes break all the rules but they shouldn’t be used anyway.

^{1Hopefully you can see by the amount of uncertainty there that this is not really well defined and so it’s a situation that you should try to avoid.}