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Re: [PATCH] Makes sort create random order
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
Re: [PATCH] Makes sort create random order |
Date: |
Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:37:21 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) |
Frederik Eaton <address@hidden> writes:
> I've given many examples - can you give an example of a situation
> where people would put (a) differently-formatted numbers in a column
> of a file (how would they become differently-formatted?) and then sort
> randomly based on their values, (b) insisting that ties stay together?
No, but that's because I don't know what the phrase "sort randomly
based on their values" means. If it's really a random process, it
will ignore their values; then it's not a sort at all.
> When you want to rearrange lines of a file, you turn to one command
> - sort.
No, it depends on what sort of rearrangement I want. If I want to
reverse the file, for example, I'll use "tac".
> you might want to sort on one key and randomize on another
That can be done easily by combining "permute" and "sort", no? You
permute the input, then use a stable sort on the key that you want to
sort by.
> none of the existing programs handle large files as well as 'sort'
> does.
"tac" does.
>> That's OK in many applications. (You have 30 black balls and 20 white
>> balls in an urn, and want to select 7 balls without replacement....)
>
> OK, after some thought I agree with you. Do you think it would be too
> confusing to have both alternatives available?
It'd be nicer if we had just one alternative. And it's pretty easy:
just do "sort -u | permute" if you want to avoid duplicates.
So I still don't see why this functionality should be part of "sort".
Re: [PATCH] Makes sort create random order, Bob Proulx, 2005/01/28