Just for fun, I had a std::list of const char*, each element pointing to a null-terminated text string, and ran a std::list::sort() on it. As it happens, it sort of (no pun intended) did not sort the strings. Considering that it was working on pointers, that makes sense.

According to the documentation of std::list::sort(), it (by default) uses the operator < between the elements to compare.

Forgetting about the list for a moment, my actual question is: How do these (>, <, >=, <=) operators work on pointers in C++ and C? Do they simply compare the actual memory addresses?

char* p1 = (char*) 0xDAB0BC47;
char* p2 = (char*) 0xBABEC475;

e.g. on a 32-bit, little-endian system, p1 > p2 because 0xDAB0BC47 > 0xBABEC475?

Testing seems to confirm this, but I thought it'd be good to put it on StackOverflow for future reference. C and C++ both do some weird things to pointers, so you never really know...