Just realized (from habits of the past) that I forgot to explicitly ask for
voting (up or down or
abstain)!
So please, if interested in any of these RFEs below, then consider to vote up
or down or abstain by
clicking on the link and then press the + button or the - button. If you want
to abstain after
having clicked any of these buttons, just re-click them, such that they pop
back to neutral (abstain).
---rony
On 25.08.2012 13:09, Rony G. Flatscher wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> thank you very much for all of your feedback which encouraged me to create
> the following two RFEs:
>
> * feature-requests:479 Add a condense method to the Array class:
> <https://sourceforge.net/p/oorexx/feature-requests/479/> and
> * feature-requests:480 Allow the sort/sortWith methods to sort sparse
> arrays as well:
> <https://sourceforge.net/p/oorexx/feature-requests/480/>
>
> ---rony
>
>
>
> On 24.08.2012 12:01, Rony G. Flatscher wrote:
>> Yesterday I stumbled over a surprising behaviour of Array's sort, which led
>> me to open a bug
>> report <https://sourceforge.net/p/oorexx/bugs/1107/>. Obviously the sorting
>> is working as
>> designed, hence the reported behaviour was not accepted as a bug.
>>
>> Having slept a night over this and thinking about my utmost surprise that
>> sort would raise an
>> error condition if it hits an empty array element (one without an entry) in
>> between, I try to
>> summarize my thoughts about the current behaviour, requesting a change of
>> the design and
>> implementation to get rid of the surprising factor and to remove
>> undeterminable fragility from
>> the Array sort.
>>
>> First, the current design and implementation:
>>
>> The single dimiensioned array that gets sorted must not have empty
>> entries in between. If the
>> sort tries to refer to an empty slot it raises "Error 98.975: Missing
>> array element at
>> position xyz" and the program is ended, if the condition does not get
>> trapped.
>>
>> Thoughts about this:
>>
>> 1. Having worked for many years sorting arrays, I was *totally surprised*
>> about this unexpected
>> (because never experienced) behaviour! The surprise factor for me was at
>> the maximum.
>> 2. There is no documentation going with sorting arrays that would
>> communicate that the arrays to
>> be sorted must have no empty elements in between that I am aware of.
>> Therefore one cannot
>> expect this behaviour at all.
>> 3. If one uses single dimensioned arrays that get changed in routines and
>> methods (written by
>> others) such that elements get removed in between, then sorting such an
>> array all of a sudden
>> (and totally unforseeable) raises the above mentioned error condition,
>> which makes sort quite
>> fragile for programmers IMHO.
>> 1. To overcome this situation, one must advice every ooRexx programmer
>> to do *always* a
>> (potentially time-consuming) makearray before sorting an array just
>> to make sure that the
>> aforementioned error condition does not get raised.
>> 4. Finally, I would have expected that an array with empty elements should
>> be sortable without a
>> problem, therefore my utmost surprise! :)
>> 1. My expectations would be simply as follows: if a single dimensioned
>> array contained empty
>> elements, then sorting would work and all the empty elements are
>> sorted to the end of the
>> array, no matter what the comparison method returns. This way, after
>> a sort, all empty
>> elements are always at the end of the array. (The items and size
>> messages would remain
>> the same.)
>>
>> The questions I would have, before contemplating about filing a RFE:
>>
>> * am I the only one who is surprised about a failing sort on a single
>> dimensioned array if in
>> between there are empty elements?
>> * Independent of this, would it be acceptable to change the current design
>> and implementation
>> of the sort such that empty elements are tolerated and put to the end of
>> the array (what
>> would be arguments, thoughts that speak against such a change)?
>>
>> ---rony
>>
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