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Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:06:05 -0700
To: Uri Guttman <u...@stemsystems.com>
Cc: Damian Conway <dam...@conway.org>,	Perl 6 Language <perl6-langu...@perl.org>
Subject: Re: The Sort Problem
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From: fibon...@babylonia.flatirons.org (Luke Palmer)

Uri Guttman writes:
> >>>>> "LP" == Luke Palmer <fibon...@babylonia.flatirons.org> writes:
> 
>   LP> Uri Guttman writes:
>   >> because that would be the default comparison and the extracted key value
>   >> would be stringified unless some other marker is used. most sorts are on
>   >> strings so this would be a useful huffman and removal of a redundancy.
> 
>   LP> While I like where most of this is going, I beg to differ on this point.
>   LP> I end up sorting numbers more often then strings, except when I'm
>   LP> sorting the keys of a hash.  I'm always annoyed in my one liners when I
>   LP> have to write out:
> 
>   LP>     sort { $a <=> $b } ...
> 
>   LP> And I'd be thrilled if it were as easy as:
> 
>   LP>     sort { +$_ } ...
> 
> oh, i don't want to see <=> anywhere in sort code. i don't mind + or int
> as markers for that.  you seem to actually be agreeing with me that
> strings are the default key type and + is needed for a numeric sort. but
> do you do integer or float sorts? and as i said, i don't like the
> asymmetry of int vs +.

Usually integer.  But specifying integer is usually an optimization
guideline, whereas there is a much greater semantic difference between
sorting strings and floats.  C<int> deserves to be longer as just an
optimization guideline.

And yes, I agree that string should be default. 

Luke