> Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 23:06:34 -0400
> From: Yanick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> While we are all in a post-mortem mood, could someone explains
> to me, in simple words of no more than two syllables, why stuff like
>
> map y|w|y|, sort @a;
>
> changes the values of @a?
OK: It just does, so there.
> I was under the impression that sort returned the sorted values and
> no references to the original array. I had been using that trick for
> at least three solutions when the realisation of what I was doing
> sank in (realisation that was of course quickly followed by a
> heart-felt 'what in Dante's brimstone-infested third hell...'). I am
> still puzzled...
Me too... I was looking at something that said "sort map s///,%x", and
thinking: If I didn't need the substitution to stick, I could save one
character with "map s///,sort%x". Hmmm, let's see what it does, maybe
I can save it some way... Hey, funky, it just works!
But this is only on 5.6.x, it seems; ask Dave about that. I looked
through perldelta, which says
=head2 Simple sort() using { $a <=> $b } and the like are optimized
Many common sort() operations using a simple inlined block are now
optimized for faster performance.
Maybe that's why --- passing through the refs would speed things up.
Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Humour NOT marked)
