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From: Andrew.Vignaux@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andrew Vignaux)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: sort
Message-ID: <1990Aug22.111018.3329@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 22 Aug 90 11:10:18 GMT
References: <1990Aug21.202005.26275@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU> <1990Aug21.224327.20194@iwarp.intel.com>
Sender: news@comp.vuw.ac.nz (News Admin)
Organization: Comp Sci, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.
Lines: 39

In article <1990Aug21.224327.20194@iwarp.intel.com>,
merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes:
>sub by_the_numbers {
>	$a - $b;
>}

The original poster asked about sorting integers so this answer is
right.  However, there is a possible trap.  I couldn't work out why

	@a = (50.1, 50.4, 50.2);
	@sorta = sort by_the_numbers @a;
	print "@sorta\n";

sometimes didn't work for me (well actually, imagine a LARGE list with
a few |element1 - element2| < 0.5)

"sort" wants integers (<, ==, >) 0 not reals!

Is there a better/stronger/faster "float" comparison function than

	sub by_the_numbers { $a > $b ? 1 : $a < $b ? -1 : 0; }

especially if $a and $b are indexes into an associative array?
	e.g  ... $foo{$a} > $foo{$b} ? ...


Here's an interesting sorter (extracted so my one-liner fits ;-)  I
think you can tell that perl is using qsort "as time goes by".

	$s=(localtime(time))[0]; sub n { ($a - $b) * $s; }

print grep(s/.*\t//,sort n grep($_=++$i/-50."\t$_",split(/\n*/,<<JAPH)));
,rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ
JAPH

Andrew
-- 
Domain address: Andrew.Vignaux@comp.vuw.ac.nz
Lament:		Why do my one-liners never fit in one line? :-(