Jon Hylands (2001-11-15 12:07):

> On Thu, 15 Nov 2001 19:37:13 +0100, Stefan Schmiedl <s at xss.de> wrote:
> 
> > sorting the <title> field strings will work, even
> > if they have different lengths. Access to the <name>
> > field is only necessary if the <title> field of the
> > records in question is identical, hence has the same
> > length. So sorting the name field only occurs with
> > identical "prefixes", which have no effect on sort order.
> 
> The only reason you can get away with that is because $, has an ascii value
> of less than alphabetic characters. If you used $| as the separater, it
> wouldn't work in some cases.

??? oh, because with higher-value separators the short words would come
after the long words. yes, you're right there.

> 
> I wouldn't want to trust a sort algorithm like that in any application I
> cared about...

well, I assumed that the input was generated externally
and hence unlikely to change. so I did The Simplest Thing
That Could Possibly Work. :-)

if the external data format ever changes, well, that's another
User Story.

But let's not get into philosphical debates here, one GPL-discussion
thread per year is enough. :-)

s.

-- 
Stefan Schmiedl
EDV-Beratung, Programmierung, Schulung
Loreleystr. 5, 94315 Straubing, Germany
Tel. (0 94 21) 74 01 06
Public Key: http://xss.de/stefan.public

shhhh ... I can't hear my code!