Thanks Bruce Van Allen and Ken Williams!
I've just implemented Bruce's suggestion:
sub naturalorder {
# A subroutine that sorts like the Macintosh Natural Order extension.
# Created by Vic Norton, 26 Nov 2000.
# Modified to work in an external package on 27 Jan 2001;
# Thanks to Bruce Van Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
# Bruce Van Allen's modification
my ($pkg) = caller;
no strict 'refs';
my $a = ${$pkg.'::a'};
my $b = ${$pkg.'::b'};
# Norton's original routine continues from here
my $u = lc($a);
my $v = lc($b);
...
}
This solution works perfectly!
Regards,
Vic
At 10:01 PM -0800 1/26/01, Bruce Van Allen wrote:
>At 2:22 PM -0500 1/26/01, Vic Norton wrote:
>>How do you package a sorting subroutine for use with sort? That's
>>what I don't understand.
>
>[snip]
>
>>I assume that I am losing $a and $b when my subroutine resides in the
>>external package VTN::Utilities, but I don't know what to do about it.
>
>The global variables $a and $b are temporarily set in the package
>where the sort routine was compiled. So, if your sort subroutine is
>defined in an external package, to access the sort variables you'll
>need to make $a and $b properly qualified over there.
>
>...
