Re: can a and d be the same for asort?

[Andrew J. Schorr]

It's OK, but why is it useful and worth documenting?
What's the benefit of supplying a 2nd argument equal
to the 1st argument?

On Sun, Jul 04, 2021 at 09:12:23AM -0500, Peng Yu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Array-Sorting-Functions.html
> 
> It is not clear whether it is OK to make s and d be the same array.
> Should they never be the same in order for asort to work? If so,
> should this be clearly stated? If not, it should also be mentioned to
> make it clear.
> 
>        asort(s [, d [, how] ]) Return  the  number of elements in the
> source array s.  Sort the contents of s using gawk's normal rules for
> comparing values, and
>                                replace the indices of the sorted
> values s with sequential integers starting with 1. If the optional
> destination array d is speci-
>                                fied, first duplicate s into d, and
> then sort d, leaving the indices of the source array s unchanged. The
> optional string how con-
>                                trols the direction and the comparison
> mode.  Valid values for how are any of the strings valid for
> PROCINFO["sorted_in"].  It can
>                                also be the name of a user-defined
> comparison function as described in PROCINFO["sorted_in"].
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Peng