Back in my post on November 27<\/a> I introduced a perl program that finds the median of a list of numbers. It depends on perl’s built-in sort<\/strong> function to put the numbers in order.<\/p>\n Not only does perl’s sort<\/strong> work for numbers, but also for words. The syntax for numbers is<\/p>\n sort{$a <=> $b}@array_of_numbers<\/span><\/p>\n while the syntax for words (aka strings) is<\/p>\n sort{$a cmp $b}@array_of_strings<\/span><\/p>\n The cmp<\/strong> in the strings syntax is itself a built-in function that compares strings.<\/p>\n Here’s a brief program that orders a list of words it receives from the command line: Running the program from the terminal, you enter the list of words after the program name with just spaces (not commas) between. Suppose you save the program as<\/p>\n alphasort.txt<\/span><\/p>\n and want to run it on the list <\/p>\n apple xylophone holiday beeswax packing<\/span><\/p>\n From the proper directory you key in<\/p>\n perl alphasort.txt apple xylophone holiday beeswax packing<\/span><\/p>\n then press enter<\/span>.<\/p>\n I’ll be talking more about the perl sort function, string comparisons, and much else in coming posts. HTH:)<\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n Robert’s Perl tutorial<\/a><\/p>\n McGrath, Mike. Perl in easy steps.<\/em> Southam: Computer Step, 2004. <\/p>\n
\n
\n#!\/usr\/bin\/perl
\n
\n@array_in_order=sort{$a cmp $b}@ARGV;
\nprint “\\n\\nHere is your list of words in alphabetical order:\\n\\n”;
\nforeach $one(@array_in_order){
\nprint “$one “;
\n}
\nprint “\\n\\n”;<\/p>\n