In this very particular case you should consider turning off the warning, maybe limiting it to the block. On Jun 17, 2016 5:42 PM, "Kenneth Wolcott" <kennethwolc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Kenneth Wolcott > <kennethwolc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi; > > > > I'm having trouble understanding the built-in Perl sort with regards > > to mixed numbers and strings > > > > I'm looking at http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/sort.html > > > > I have an array that I want to have sorted numerically and descending. > > > > The array is composed of elements that look like the following regex: > > > > ^\d+\t\[a-zA-Z0-9]+$ > > > > I always have "use strict" at the top of my Perl scripts. > > > > If I try: > > > > my @articles = sort {$b <=> $a} @files; > > > > I get error(s)/warning(s) that the data is not numeric. > > > > if I try: > > > > my @articles = sort {$b cmp $a} @files; > > > > I will get numbers sorted as letters, not numerically. > > > > I tried to understand the sort perldoc page further down, but did > > not grok it at all. > > > > What I did as a workaround was to implement my own extremely > > brute-force sort routine, which works, but is very ugly. > > > > Since I have very few elements (perhaps as many as a couple dozen), > > the inefficiency is immaterial. > > > > I'd rather that my code be correct, intuitive and elegant (and > efficient). > > > > Thanks, > > Ken Wolcott > > Addendum: > > It appears that when the sequence of digits is the same length in all > instances that the data will be sorted correctly, but when the length > of the sequence of the digits is not the same in the entire data set, > that is when the sort results will be incorrect. > > My most current data with this reverse character sort mechanism works > correctly, but I'd like it to work in all cases. > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org > For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org > http://learn.perl.org/ > > >
