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From: tbg@apollo.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Need Forth Sort
Message-ID: <3421893a.ae34@apollo.uucp>
Date: Tue, 7-Apr-87 10:23:00 EST
Article-I.D.: apollo.3421893a.ae34
Posted: Tue Apr  7 10:23:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 00:23:41 EST
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 25


    Anybody have a definition of a word that will 
    sort 4 integers on the stack?  I need one and I'm
    very surprised that none of the books I've got
    has one.  Of course I could write one myself but
    I thought it would be a fun use of comp.lang.forth.

    Actually what I need is something that will check 
    four words on the stack to see if at least three
    of them are approximately equal, and return the
    average of the approximately equal ones and a flag
    indicating whether there were at least 3 approximately
    equal values found (or garbage and a flag indicating
    that there were not 3 values approximately equal).
    
    Speed is important.  The value used to test for
    "approximately equal" could be either a variable or
    passed as an argument, whichever is faster.  I think
    an easy way to check for 3 approximately equal values
    would be to sort the 4 values first, so that's why
    I need a sort routine.  Maybe I have the basis of
    a Dr. Dobb's article here, if it hasn't all been 
    written about before.

/tom