Re: Side effects of `sort'

[Dave Abrahams]

on Thu Mar 01 2012, Daniel Schoepe <daniel-AT-schoepe.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> according to describe-function, `sort' modifies its input list, but not
> in any way that the programmer can rely on. (For example, '(2 1 3)
> becomes '(2 3)). I assume the precise thing that ends up in the original
> list is an implementation detail and being able to "destroy" the
> original list has some performance benefits.
>
> Personally, I find this behavior very surprising and think it would make
> more sense to either set the input list to the final sorting result (in
> addition to returning it) or not to modify the input. In the current
> situation, one basically has to do something like (setq foo (sort foo))
> anyway if one wants to continue using foo (or pass a copy of foo to sort
> instead), which would no longer be necessary after this change (modulo
> backwards compatibility).
>
> Is there some rationale for sort working the way it does, that I am
> missing here?

Lisp doesn't really have access to "the input list" in any real sense:

   (sort (identity x))

do you expect x to be rebound?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com