I don't really care about the precise language or semantics. I just don't want applications to break in the wild because an Array.sort implementation's stability changes based on the number of elements. That feels like a much easier problem to solve than the problem of some browsers being unstable and some being stable. This is absolutely the sort of thing that would bite me as a JS dev and will bite every person who uses my compiler to convert an application. Why would they test with both small and large element counts?
-kg On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Mark S. Miller <erig...@google.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Kevin Gadd <kevin.g...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Even if stable sorts don't get required, it would make sense to require >> that a given implementation is either always stable or always not stable. >> > > How would such a requirement differ from the status quo? Doesn't the > current v8 impl satisfy it, since a sort that happens to be stable still > meets the requirements of an unstable sort? What does "always not stable" > mean? > > > > >> The current situation with V8 seems likely to result in subtly broken >> software shipping to the web, where it works in testing environments with >> small amounts of data and then breaks in the wild only on certain browsers >> and only if you have a certain amount of data. Yuck. >> >> -kg >> >> >> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 6:05 AM, Mathias Bynens <math...@qiwi.be> wrote: >> >>> Bumping this old thread since V8 issue #90 ( >>> https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=90) has been getting lots >>> of comments lately. >>> >>> It appears that unstable sort, while perfectly spec-compliant, doesn’t >>> match user expectations. It doesn’t help that some browsers/engines _do_ >>> use a stable sorting algorithm, while others don’t — which surprises people >>> and occasionally breaks (badly-written, but hey) code. (See the thread I >>> linked to for examples.) Then, there’s V8, which uses stable sort for small >>> arrays with 10 or fewer elements, but an unstable sorting algorithm for >>> larger arrays, causing even more confusion. >>> >>> Here’s a test case that tests arrays of varying sizes: >>> http://ofb.net/~sethml/is-sort-stable.html The results in different >>> browsers are listed, too. >>> >>> IMHO it would be nice if ES would require a stable sorting algorithm: it >>> would match user expectations, cause fewer issues in existing code, and >>> improve operability in general. >>> >>> What would be the best way to make TC39 consider this change? >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> es-discuss mailing list >>> es-discuss@mozilla.org >>> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> es-discuss mailing list >> es-discuss@mozilla.org >> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss >> >> > > > -- > Cheers, > --MarkM >
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