Why does Python 2 allow comparisons between lists and numbers? [duplicate]

Question

I recently discovered a typo in my program

while len(first_list) > second_list:
    do_stuff

I played around with this and discovered that 5 < ["apple"] == True and 5 > ["apple"] == False

Why does Python allow these sorts of comparisons? What is being evaluated under the hood to determine that 5 is less than ["apple"]?

Answer 1

I think that the types are compared in this case, so it's like writing:

type(5) < type(["apple"])

and since "int" and "list" are compared lexicographically ("i" < "l"), you're getting this output.

If you try:

"5" > ["apple"]

you'll get False, since "string" > "list".

Documentation:

CPython implementation detail: Objects of different types except numbers are ordered by their type names; objects of the same types that don’t support proper comparison are ordered by their address.

Answer 2

Its from documentation of python 2:

The operators <, >, ==, >=, <=, and != compare the values of two objects. The objects need not have the same type. If both are numbers, they are converted to a common type. Otherwise, objects of different types always compare unequal, and are ordered consistently but arbitrarily. You can control comparison behavior of objects of non-builtin types by defining a __cmp__ method or rich comparison methods like __gt__.