What I'm trying to do is write a binary search module that takes the same comparator function that was used to sort the array being search.

I'm getting the idea here that since $a and $b are package variables, sort comparators need to be declared in the same package as their use. I had thought that, for instance

# the following is dumb and is written strictly as an example package backwards; sub pmc { $b cmp $a }; package main; print sort backwards::pmc ( split /\s+/, `cat $0` )

would work as intended.

it doesn't

so it looks like ${caller().'::a'} is going to be where the search key goes, and ${caller().'::b'} is going to be where the guesses go for evaluation. Done with glob aliasing, of course.

Thank you everyone


In reply to Re^2: just how special are $a and $b these days? by davidnicol
in thread just how special are $a and $b these days? by davidnicol

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