Re: Re: sort syntax

[thelenm]

It compiles okay for me (don't know if it was changed since you posted). The }{ looks funny in the middle of the code, but it's just taking advantage of the fact that the -n flag assumes the following loop around the program as documented in perlrun:

LINE:
  while (<>) {
      ...         # your program goes here
  }

Putting }{ in the middle of the "your program goes here" section is a Perl golf trick that I believe was invented by Eugene Van der Pijll. It makes the code before it part of the while loop, and the code afterward gets executed outside the loop. Using the -n flag causes perl to literally put the while loop around it, as you can see if you do this:

perl -MO=Deparse -lne '$x{1,sort/./g}.=$_}{/./&& print for %x'