Re: WHINY_USERS=0

[Hermann Peifer]

Aharon Robbins wrote:
> It's what programmer types call an "easter egg", meaning an undocumented
> feature with unusual or interesting behavior, and I intend to keep it
> that way (but see the gawk.texi file :-).
>
> The feature as coded means "if WHINY_USERS exists in the environment,
> enable the whiny user related features." (There are at least two.)
>
> So, the behavior you're seeing is what I wanted.  I don't intend to
> change it.
>
> Personally, I think you should use asort or asorti if you want array
> sorting. The code is much clearer that way.

Aharon,

Thanks for the explanations, which confirms my observation that 
WHINY_USERS=0 isn't enough to unset the variable.

About asort() and asorti(): I use these functions occasionally, but what 
I actually need most are simply sorted *original* array indices (which 
almost always have some meaning, like country code, or similar, so I 
don't want to destroy them). IMO, there is nothing better and cleaner 
than WHINY_USERS to achieve this gawk behaviour. The built-in asorti() 
function forces me to copy src array into dest array in order to avoid 
the loss of original indices. This makes the code more complicated, as I 
see it.

Anyway: I actually didn't want to start a discussion here. Thanks again 
for the WHINY_USERS easter egg!.

Hermann

PS for Tim: You might want to re-visit your WHINY_USERS performance test 
described in http://awk.info/?tip/whinyUsers