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Re: Sorting in-place

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From:
pcg
Date:
July 31, 2001 06:51
Subject:
Re: Sorting in-place
Message ID:
20010731155056.A22147@cerebro.laendle
On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 08:04:23AM -0400, "Clinton A . Pierce" <clintp@geeksalad.org> wrote:
> > How about:
> > [example that didn't work as advertized, later backed up by one that did]
> 
> compatibility police might object?  Why?  Because someone might be using sort

i don't, as sort does not behave this way currently.

> And as far as accidental use in a list/scalar context: wouldn't that be a 
> problem now anyways?

again, no, since sort does not behave that way currently.

however, if it did, then this would be a very common error. how do you
force void context currently? and list context? it's possible, of course,
but it's extreme action at-a-distance.

> is).  But the problem solved is similar to that of keys/values and each; and

it's similar, yes, and only being able to iterate once over a hash even
in totally different modules by different authors is an extremely nasty
thing, even if it occurs rarely in practise (it bite me about three times
in the last 6 years)

> the "smart" range operators in later perls

what are you talking about (what range operators have been added to "later
perls"?). if you mean ".." (which is very old) then I can't follow you: ..
became smarter but did not change semantics.

> avoiding having heaping piles of crap returned by an operator/function
> that can better be done in place.  If we can do this without adding a
> keyword I don't see why not.

The real problem is the lack of optimization in this part of perl, not yet
another weird semantics that breaks at a distance ;)

I'd still liek the huh? operator (??) in perl, though ;)

> This feels like the Right Thing to do.  It really does.

It looks like a bug to me ;)

-- 
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      ---==---(_)__  __ ____  __       Marc Lehmann      +--
      --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ /       pcg@goof.com      |e|
      -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\       XX11-RIPE         --+
    The choice of a GNU generation                       |
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