Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

A short mental gauntlet for your scalar sort proposal. 2 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.

  • __ (Score:1)

    by Abigail (26) on 2006.02.09 16:19 (#46100) Journal
    If sort() should do X, why not map and grep?
    That's easy. With map and grep, you can't determine the size of the output list purely from the size of the input list. So, having map and grep return the sizes of their output lists (if the functions were run in list context) in scalar context make sense.

    For sort to ignore its first (optional) argument, and have it act as a counting function doesn't make any sense. We already have a function that does this: the list assignment in scalar context.

    • It’s not that having sort act as a counting function is useful. It’s that no credible argument can be made against it, and that no suggestions for any sensible alternative have been forthcoming in 10 years.

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.