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From: tenaglia@mis.mcw.edu (Chris Tenaglia - 257-8765)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: Handy Dandy List Cooker
Message-ID: <8911272129.AA22193@uwm.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 89 18:06:40 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 58

Dear Icon-Group,                      

Here is another very useful procedure. I call it cook. It takes a list
of strings (filenames, usernames, etc,...) and converts them into a list
of output lines. It currently assumes that the list is sorted.

One can output a list of strings usually by

    every writes(!elements," ")

where elements is a list of strings. But the format is typically like
the VMS DIR or DOS DIR/W command. Unix generates a vertically oriented
alphabetical list of filenames which is easier to look through. I submit
my attempt below. However, my code does not have much of the spirit of
icon to it, and many of you may have more elegant (and more efficient)
implementations. Please feel free to improve on it. Perhaps even a
different approach as a type of sorter? Have fun!

The prototype is - procedure cook(lst,cols,width)
    required  :    lst is the sorted list of strings to be formatted
    optional  :    cols is how many cols are desired (5 is default)
    optional  :    width is the output width (80 is default)

Yours truly,

Chris Tenaglia (System Manager)         tenaglia@mis.mcw.edu
Medical College of Wisconsin
8701 W. Watertown Plank Rd.
Milwaukee, WI 53226
(414)257-8765

======================================================================

##################################################################
#                                                                #
# THIS PROCEDURE COOKS A LIST OF STRINGS SO THAT THE LIST COMES  #
# OUT IN UNIX LS FORMAT RATHER THAN VMS DIR FORMAT               #
#                                                                #
##################################################################
procedure cook(lst,cols,width)
  local limit,size,array,meal,food,i,j,row,column
  /cols := 5                ; /width := 80
  items := *lst             ; size   := width / cols
  rows  := items / cols + 1 ; limit  := rows * cols
  array := table(" ")       ; meal   := []
  until *lst > limit do put(lst," ")            # push for reverse order
  every column := 1 to cols do
    every row  := 1 to rows do
      array[row||","||column] := pop(lst)       # pull for reverse order
  every row := 1 to rows do
    {
    food := ""
    every column  := 1 to cols do
      food ||:= left(array[row||","||column],size)
    put(meal,trim(food))
    }
  return meal
  end