Miha Radej wrote:
> I have an array of filenames, ie:
> @files_a = qw(file1a.ext file1.ext file1m.ext file1g.ext)
> @files_b = qw(file2w.ext file2a.ext file2z.ext file2b.ext file2.ext
> file2x.ext file2y.ext file2c.ext)
>
> What I need to is sort the arrays by the versions (the files I have been
> presented with use alphabetical versioning, ie. no letter means
> original, then versions go as a, b, c, ...).
...
During the heady days of the space race NASA were stumped by the problem
of making a fountain pen work in outer space. They spent millions of
dollars developing the predecessor of the ball point pen.
The Russians used pencils.
Moral: Sometimes, you're looking at the wrong problem...
Ancillary moral: A bad illustration can muck up an otherwise perfectly good post...
<http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp>
The lesson of this anecdote is a valid one, that we sometimes expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a "high-tech" solution to a problem, when a perfectly good, cheap, and simple solution is right before our eyes. The anecdote offered above isn't a real example of this syndrome, however. Fisher did ultimately develop a pressurized pen for use by NASA astronauts (now known as the famous "Fisher Space Pen"), but both American and Soviet space missions initially used pencils, NASA did not seek out Fisher and ask them to develop a "space pen," Fisher did not charge NASA for the cost of developing the pen, and the Fisher pen was eventually used by both American and Soviet astronauts.
--
pDale Campbell
"eleven plus two = twelve plus one"
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