title: Is it reliable to compare two isoformat datetime strings?
body: <p>I need to find out which of two isoformatted datetime strings is the latest.</p>
  
  <p>By now, I convert them using <code>datetime.strptime</code> method. 
  Then I compare two <code>datetime</code> objects.
  Then I call <code>isoformat</code> of the greatest <code>datetime</code> object in order to pass it as a get parameter.</p>
  
  <p>So I'm wondering if it is reliable to find out the greatest isoformatted string without doing converstion from <code>str</code> to <code>datetime</code>.</p>
  
  <p>It seems to work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; from datetime import datetime as dt
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s1 = '2013-12-25T19:20:41.391393'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s2 = '2013-12-25T19:20:41.391394'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s1 &gt; s2
  False
  &gt;&gt;&gt; pattern = '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; dt.strptime(s1, pattern) &gt; dt.strptime(s2, pattern)
  False
  </code></pre>