sorting pathnames by basename

[Hewitt Tech]

I think the more interesting question is "How dense is the resulting object
code which implements the semantics of the program?". This has been an
on-going language design/implementation question for most of the history of
computing. For example, a particular program can be implemented in "C" which
performs a certain action or actions intended to solve a problem. A high
level language like Fortran for example might result in much tighter higher
performance object code than the same "C" program. "C" was deliberately
designed to inhibit compiler optimizations - the philosophy of the language
designers was that the programmer should have more control. Fortran on the
other hand performs many optimizations by default and a "C" programmer would
need to modify their first iteration of their program to achieve some of the
same optimizations.

Personally, I prefer readability over terseness. The enemy of reliable,
maintainable programs is the terse, clever programmer. Often these terse
programs have subtle bugs that are quite difficult to ferret out.
Additionally, good compiler designers can out-perform these terse unreadable
programs using a myriad of object code optimizations.

-Alex

P.S. All bets are off however if the programmer implements a better
algorithmn...

----- Original Message -----
From: <bscott at ntisys.com>
To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <discuss at gnhlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: sorting pathnames by basename


> On 20 Aug 2002, at 8:07am, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> > It was a one-liner.  Take it for what it was.
>
>   I am curious: If that Perl code was optimized for education (as opposed
to
> source size), what would it look like?  I am thinking, specifically, of
the
> Python example that was posted.  Without even knowing anything about
Python,
> I suspect that code could be made denser, by eliminating temporary
variables
> and nesting things instead.  Can the reverse be done to the Perl code?
>
> --
> Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
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