Re^4: Pearls (not really) of Perl programming

[Courage]

in reply to Re^3: Pearls (not really) of Perl programming
in thread Pearls (not really) of Perl programming

Although you give examples of strange code and it does not pretend to be good, I can't resist pointing that:

code block given to sort must behave (as POD stays.)
Namely, once f(a,b) return false f(b,a) must return true.
Some versions of perl dumped core when fed some misbehaving comparision sub.
Such core dumps were fixed, but general rule remain: comparision sub must behave

This means that sort {rand(5) <=> rand(5)} is obviously wrong, but sort {1} also not good.

[ysth]

To clarify, prior to perl 5.005 (!) sort used to use libc's qsort, which would sometimes coredump on certain platforms with pathological return values. But this isn't a concern any longer unless you are stuck with a really old perl.

[htoug]

The comparison function for sort must not just return 'true' and 'false'.
It must return '-1', '0' and '+1' for comparing 'Less Than', 'Equal To' and 'Greater Than', just like the two standard comparison operators 'cmp' and '<=>' (for stringwise and numeric comparison respectively).

Just using 'true' (ie non-zero, probably 1) and false (ie 0 or '') will lead to confusion.

If f(a, b) is 'false' then f(b, a) must also be false because a 'Equals' b - for whatever value of 'Equals' this sorting choses to use.
If f(a, b) is 'true' then f(b, a) must return '-1' (ie a true value, but *not* just true) because a is 'Greater Than' b in this case, and therefore b must be 'Less Than' a - not 'Equal To', or something is decidedly wierd.

You have to be consistent however you chose to do it.

[Courage]

You're right, thanks for correction.

I just could not resist to point out for general idea (I saw that in p5p list) but I forgot to recheck all details

But once we decided to be precise, let me make additional correction.
Requirement to return '-1', '0' and '+1' is too restrictive. According to perldoc -f sort:

parison order.  If SUBNAME is specified, it gives the name of a
subroutine that returns an integer less than, equal to, or
greater than 0, depending on how the elements of the list are
to be ordered.  (The "<=>" and "cmp" operators are extremely
useful in such routines.)  SUBNAME may be a scalar variable

So any negative and positive values are ok.