Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
We don't bite newbies here... much
 
PerlMonks  

Re^2: Extracting unique elements from array

by koolgirl (Hermit)
on Sep 28, 2011 at 19:34 UTC ( [id://928404]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Extracting unique elements from array
in thread Extracting unique elements from array

AH, damn it I have forgotten everything, I swear. That's what I get for adding to the cookbook's code. Thank you. I would still like to maybe understand what's happening w/$a and $b in cmp routines, but this should work for now anyway. Thanks again.


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.." -- George Bernard Shaw

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Extracting unique elements from array
by wink (Scribe) on Sep 28, 2011 at 20:00 UTC

    I'm not quite sure I understand where your confusion lies with cmp... cmp is just an operator that returns -1 if its left operand is alphabetically before its right operand, 0 if the operands are equal, and 1 if the left operand is alphabetically after the right operand.

    When you use the sort function of perl, you can tell it how you want it to behave. You don't need to pass the elements of your list to $a and $b, sort will do it for you.

    @abclist = qw(a b c d e); @numlist = qw(1 3 5 7 9); print sort {$a cmp $b} @abclist; // Default sort, prints 'a b c d e' print sort {$b cmp $a} @abclist; // Prints 'e d c b a' print sort {$b <=> $a} @numlist; // Prints '9 7 5 3 1' print sort {$a == 7 ? -1 : ($b == 7 ? 1 : $a <=> $b)} @numlist;

    That last one is the most interesting. It ensures that 7 will always be the first element in the list... if $a is 7, no matter that $b is, we say that $a is less than $b; if $b is 7, no matter what $a is, we say that $a is greater than $b; otherwise, we do a normal <=> comparison.

    Sort allows you to provide a block of code that will evaluate to a negative number, 0, or a positive number to create custom sort behavior.

Re^3: Extracting unique elements from array
by Marshall (Canon) on Sep 28, 2011 at 22:14 UTC
    Update: I am replying to this part: I would still like to maybe understand what's happening w/$a and $b in cmp routines. I interpreted this to mean: how does comparison and $a and $b work? This is not directly on the point of the original question, but appears to be on point for the follow-up statement.

    I'll try to help you with $a, $b and cmp. I've tried to explain this a number of times - sometimes with more success than others! I have not read by anybody or written myself the "perfect" faq on this - so this is just yet another attempt! On a subject like this, I think that hearing it from different people in different words helps. For that reason, I'm not sure that it is even possible to write the "perfect" faq on this!

    The reason for sorting is of course to order something. Order what? In order to "sort" something, we have to start with "something" where order has meaning. That sounds basic, but sometimes this is a stumbling block!

    That "something" is a list of stuff or an array of stuff. This cannot be a hash of stuff because hashes have no order (we can sort the keys to a hash because we can make an ordered list of them), but to "sort the hash" itself has no meaning, because a hash has no sequential order.

    The basic syntax of Perl sort is:
    @output = sort{...code block...}@input;

    I'm going to back up and generalize a bit now... The following applies not only to Perl, but to C, C++, Java, etc. Current computers (not quantum computers) only deal with the comparison of 2 things at once. Fancy sorting algorithms deal with how to minimize the total number of comparisons that are required between 2 individual things to get the input data list into the desired order. The language or sorting library will provide the "fancy sorting algorithm" that minimizes the number of comparisons. What you have to provide is a way for that sorting library or language function to know whether two things are: "a<b, exactly the same: a==b", or b>a".

    Every language has its own way of implementing this requirement that the user program provide a way of comparing two things. Perl has two magic global variables, $a and $b. sort{...code block...}@input causes pairs of things from @input to be set to $a and $b and then the code within the sort block to be run. In Perl cmp causes an alphabetic comparison to be used. In Perl <=>, the "spaceship" operator causes numeric values to be used for the comparison.

    Re: Sorting help illustrates a lot of these points.
    Re: Custom sort with string of numbers gives more practical "how-to"

    I hope the code below will lead you into a "Oh, my gosh!" realization! The code within the sort{...} block is essentially a subroutine and you can put other stuff in there like "print"! Below, I show which 2 items the version specific sort compares.

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @array1 = ("jerry", "abe", "hope", "crazy_horse", "lewis","bob"); print "initial array order: @array1\n"; my @array = sort @array1; print "The default sort: @array\n"; @array = sort{$a cmp $b}@array1; print "The same sort order: @array\n\n"; @array = sort{ print "comparing $a and $b \n"; $a cmp $b; } @array1; print "\n"; print "The same thing: @array\n\n"; __END__ initial array order: jerry abe hope crazy_horse lewis bob The default sort: abe bob crazy_horse hope jerry lewis The same sort order: abe bob crazy_horse hope jerry lewis comparing jerry and abe comparing hope and crazy_horse comparing lewis and bob comparing abe and crazy_horse comparing crazy_horse and jerry comparing jerry and hope comparing abe and bob comparing bob and crazy_horse comparing crazy_horse and lewis comparing lewis and hope comparing lewis and jerry The same thing: abe bob crazy_horse hope jerry lewis
    Update: One of the main points that I was trying to get across was that when you see a tricky, map{} grep{} sort{} and wonder what it does and how it works?, it is completely fine to put some print statements in there! I do this when I am debugging something complex and my brain can't comprehend why "what is happening" is happening! These code blocks that map, grep, sort use are like subroutines.

    Please note that the last statement in a block like what I'm talking about cannot be 'print "$result\n";' because "print" like all I/O routines returns a status, in this case '1', so you need something like: print $result; $result; or some other way so that the last line is the return value.

Re^3: Extracting unique elements from array
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2011 at 21:17 UTC

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://928404]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others perusing the Monastery: (4)
As of 2024-03-29 00:45 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found