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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: sort
Message-ID: <9337@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 30 Aug 90 00:24:44 GMT
References: <1990Aug21.224327.20194@iwarp.intel.com> <1990Aug22.111018.3329@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <MIKE.MCMANUS.90Aug28165252@mustang.FtCollins.NCR.com> <105536@convex.convex.com> <1990Aug29.191454.23527@iwarp.intel.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 16

In article <1990Aug29.191454.23527@iwarp.intel.com> merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes:
: In article <105536@convex.convex.com>, tchrist@convex (Tom Christiansen) writes:
: | Is this simple enough for the sort function?
: | 
: |     sub bynum { substr($a,$[+1,10) > substr($b,$[+1,10); }
: 
: Nope nope nope.  I made that same mistake once.  Think about
: what this returns... either "1" or "0", not "1" or "-1".  Arrrgh. :-)
: 
: You want something like I already posted involving a test and a 1 or
: -1 return.

I just had the weirdest thought.  The ne and != operators should maybe
return -1 or +1 when the operands aren't equal.

Larry