Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!oliveb!pyramid!jimmy
From: jimmy@pyramid.pyramid.com (Jimmy Aitken)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Perl help requested
Keywords: perl sort
Message-ID: <69461@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 9 May 89 06:36:38 GMT
Reply-To: jimmy@pyramid.pyramid.com (Jimmy Aitken)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 29

Since perl was posted to comp.sources*, I've posted this request here.
I couldn't think of a more appropriate newsgroup so here goes.

I've got a perl program that requires an array to be sorted ignoring
case and non alpha-numeric characters. i.e. The equivalent of
'sort -fd'. Currently I do it by:

@sorted=sort fieldsort @list
	|
	|
sub fieldsort {
    local($x=$a, $y=$b);
    $x =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
    $x =~ tr/ -@{-}//;
    $y =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
    $y =~ tr/ -@{-}//;
    $x lt $y ? -1 : $x gt $y ? 1 : 0;
}

To my mind this is ugly and uses about twice the user time comapred to
a simple 'sort @list.'  Can anyone come up with a cleaner/faster way
of doing this operation?  Thanks for any help.

jimmy
-- 
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