Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/KT)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: sort
Message-ID: <1990Sep1.143725.20938@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 1 Sep 90 14:37:25 GMT
References: <105536@convex.convex.com> <1990Aug29.191454.23527@iwarp.intel.com> <9337@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/KT)
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl
Organization: North Coast Public Access *NIX, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 31

As quoted from <9337@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> by lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall):
+---------------
| 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.
+---------------

Not necessary.  One change should do it (untested, I have neither the space
nor the time to bring up Perl on ncoast):

	sub bynum { substr($a,$[+1,10) - substr($b,$[+1,10); }

The -1/+1 idea is interesting, however.  (Another doohickey for the Swiss Army
Chainsaw?  ;-)

++Brandon
-- 
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