On approximately 6/19/2004 9:08 PM, came the following characters from the keyboard of David L. Nicol: > Nick Ing-Simmons wrote: > >> (I would still like sort in scalar context to return min or max value >> - don't care which because one can change cmp function to get the other.) >> > > Currently > > ($first) = sort @ary; > > gives the first of the sorted list, after doing a mess of extra work. > If C<sort> were to > take a hint indicating how many results are going to be used, similar to > the fourth > argument of C<split> but determined by parsing appropriate l-values, > sort algorithms > that ignore the rest of the array could be used. So, in the situation where you have a countable number of parameters as the target of the sort, such as your example, or ($first, $second, $third, $fourth) = sort @ary; # only sort 4 entries @most[ 0 .. 6 ] = sort @ary; # only sort 7 entries the compiler could derive the hint, in a similar manner as it presently (recent feature) derives the in-place optimization. > * It'll make Randall Schwartz call my C coding "Amazing" which I can use on > the back covcer of my paperback If you put it on the back cover of your paperback, you might want to spell his name correctly. :) -- Glenn -- http://nevcal.com/ =========================== The best part about procrastination is that you are never bored, because you have all kinds of things that you should be doing.