sorting function arcument to 'sort': Can I pass additional parameters?

mpettis has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Update: -- Thank you all very much... I am going to hack in Anonymous Monk's solution, and investigate the other two to see if they will work, as, per blazar, I really DON'T want to pass parameters to sort.

Thanks,

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Hi,

I want to build a sorting sub within a 'for' loop that is different based on a value within the scope of the 'for' loop. Can this be done? The variables I use in the sub do not seem to be visible within the customized sorting sub. I know that $a and $b are passed automatically to this function -- is there a way to pass in other arguments to the sorting sub other than $a and $b?

Thanks,

Matt

Comment on sorting function arcument to 'sort': Can I pass additional parameters?

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Re: sorting function arcument to 'sort': Can I pass additional parameters? by Anonymous Monk on Nov 10, 2008 at 04:35 UTC
`@list = sort { blah('whatever') } @list; sub blah { my $w = shift; return $a <=> $b; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: sorting function arcument to 'sort': Can I pass additional parameters? by f00li5h (Chaplain) on Nov 10, 2008 at 06:12 UTC
If you are sorting by many fields Sort::Maker may be of some help too `@_=qw; ask f00li5h to appear and remain for a moment of pretend better than a lifetime;;s;;@_[map hex,split'',B204316D8C2A4516DE];;y/05/os/&print;`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: sorting function arcument to 'sort': Can I pass additional parameters? by blazar (Canon) on Nov 10, 2008 at 10:22 UTC
I personally believe that you don't want to "pass in other arguments to the sorting sub" because the sub is meant to be used sort and `sort()` itself won't pass anything in. Chances are you want to use closures instead: `#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use 5.010; my @trans = ( sub { shift }, sub { ~ shift } ); my @unsorted = qw/foo bar baz/; for my $tr (@trans) { my @sorted = sort { $tr->($a) cmp $tr->($b) } @unsorted; say "@sorted"; } __END__` [download] `--` If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.	[reply] [d/l] [select]