Re: Dumb sort question

[J. Landman Gay]

On 12/4/02 12:26 PM, jbv wrote:

But how can I sort a variable featuring 4 lines with several
hundreds of items in each, so that (for instance) items of
line 4 are sorted numeric ascending, and (that's important)
items of other lines being moved according to the new
position of each item of line 4 ?

For instance :
    line 1 :    b,d,c,a
    line 2 :    2,4,3,1

after sorting line 2, the content would become :
    line 1 :    a,b,c,d
    line 2 :    1,2,3,4

I have the feeling this can't be done in MC, while I remember
doing it in OMO using the spreadsheet control...

You can do pretty much anything in MC. In this case, you can use a custom function to sort the data.

P.S. I need to do it FAST on large variables, therefore a repeat
loop won't do.

The following works for me with very short lists. It does have a repeat loop in it, so you'd have to see if it is fast enough for your needs. It could probably be optimized better.

local theOldOrder,theNewOrder

on dosort
put fld 1 into theData
put line 1 of theData into theOldOrder -- or whatever is the key line
put theOldOrder into theNewOrder
sort items of theNewOrder ascending numeric
put theNewOrder & return into theNewData
delete line 1 of theData
repeat for each line l in theData
sort items of l by mySort(each,l,theOldOrder,theNewOrder)
put l & return after theNewData
end repeat
put theNewData into fld 2
end dosort

function mySort theItem,theLine
set wholematches to true
put itemoffset(theItem,theLine) into theItemNum
put item theItemNum of theOldOrder into theOriginalItem
put itemoffset(theOriginalItem,theNewOrder) into theNewPos
return theNewPos
end mySort

--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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