Strange behaviour in C++

Question

template <typename T> T& larger(T& a, T& b)
{
    return (a>b?a:b);
}


 std::string first {"vv"};
 std::string second {"That is the question in californian"};


 int main(){
 std::cout << larger(first,second) << std::endl;
 }

This should return [if a greater than b , then a , else b ]; but it returns a for me .("vv") What went wrong here >

Answer 1

The operator > and < compares both the strings not based upon the length but based on lexicographic order i.e. ASCII values.

Answer 2

operator< compares lexicographically for std::string. This means that it compares character by character, starting from the first, and only if they are equal, it compares the next one.

As you can easily verify, it holds that 'v' > 'T'. That is because lowercase letters come after uppercase letters in ASCII encoding.