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Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

Edit: apologies, I'm blind; never mind. I thought I double-checked but the use of > instead of < tripped me up.

Stepanov disagrees. You should return the second parameter if a, b are equivalent (and you should use < anyway):

  template<typename T>
  inline constexpr const T& max(const T& a, const T& b) {
     return (b < a ? a : b);
  }

What’s the reasoning behind this?

I think to be comparable in c++ types are required to implement < operator and the same is exclusively used by the stdlib.

If you sort2(a, b), it would be nice if min(a, b) == a && max(a, b) == b.