MIN() vs LEN() Behaviors as Shortest String

I’m trying to solve a question in HackerRank called “Your Weather Observation Station 5”, the question asks to return the shortest and longest city names within the provided table.

Demonstration to clarify my confusion:

SELECT MIN(City) FROM STATION; Output: A name of city with 4 characters.

SELECT MIN(LEN(City)) FROM STATION; Output: 3.

Why the MIN() function output isn’t a city name with 3 characters? I would appreciate an explanation of this behavior.

Answer

When you “MIN” a string column, you will get the alphabetically first listing. It has nothing to do with the length of the string.

Example, “Albuquerque” appears alphabetically before “Miami”.