A couple things have happened between version 1 and the current version (4) that's in the Public Repository, based on feedback I received in various channels. One thing I haven't changed yet, is the method names #sortUp and #sortDown. It was proposed by one person that maybe these would better be called #ascending and #descending, so that code snippets read like
somePoints sort: #x ascending, #y descending
I'm torn. I think it reads better in context, but not as well in isolation. Which do you prefer better?
The things that have changed are:
- The Tests have been separated out into a separate package
- It was pointed out that you can't always count on a per element accessor being able to reduce to a collatable value. For example, what if you want to sort the names of customers, but based on a given collation algorithm.
customers asSortedCollection: [:a :b | (UnicodeCollationAlgorithm collate: a with: b mode: #shifted) < 0]
How would that dovetail with this approach? So I added support for two argument blocks. You can send sortUp/sortDown to them too. Under the hood now, the SortFunction is two argument collation block, and all roads lead to creating one of them. - Because of that, you no longer need your flavor of Smalltalk to be able to do theSymbol value: trick.
- Since it all boils down to collation, I did add a new binary method: <=>. This is called the Spaceship operator in some language environments. So... you're Smalltalk flavor has to be able to support 3 character binary selectors for this to port.
- Despite seeming like a lot of changes, IIRC, the code actually ended up being smaller than the original.
Hello Travis,
ReplyDeleteCould you make this available to Squeak/Pharo users in some way?