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sort: change the main example to use Slice instead of Sort #21989

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agnivade opened this issue Sep 23, 2017 · 6 comments
Closed

sort: change the main example to use Slice instead of Sort #21989

agnivade opened this issue Sep 23, 2017 · 6 comments

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@agnivade
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Hi,

The topmost example that we see if we open https://golang.org/pkg/sort/ uses the sort.Sort function. The use case it solves is the most common one which compares an attribute inside a struct.

I think its better to point people to the more comfortable and simple function sort.Slice for the most common case.

So, that would change -

// ByAge implements sort.Interface for []Person based on
// the Age field.
type ByAge []Person

func (a ByAge) Len() int           { return len(a) }
func (a ByAge) Swap(i, j int)      { a[i], a[j] = a[j], a[i] }
func (a ByAge) Less(i, j int) bool { return a[i].Age < a[j].Age }

func main() {
	people := []Person{
		{"Bob", 31},
		{"John", 42},
		{"Michael", 17},
		{"Jenny", 26},
	}

	fmt.Println(people)
	sort.Sort(ByAge(people))
	fmt.Println(people)

}

to

func main() {
	people := []Person{
		{"Bob", 31},
		{"John", 42},
		{"Michael", 17},
		{"Jenny", 26},
	}

	fmt.Println(people)
	sort.Slice(people, func(i, j int) bool {
		return people[i].Age < people[j].Age
	})
	fmt.Println(people)
}

I believe this would lead newcomers who don't know about the new sort.Slice function and have just opened the documentation page for the first time, to use a better and simpler option.

Would be happy to send a CL if you guys agree to this.

@mvdan
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mvdan commented Sep 23, 2017

This sounds like a good idea. But perhaps we should add a sort.Sort example then, showing a common case where sort.Slice isn't enough.

@agnivade
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Yep, there are 4 examples in the top section. All of them use sort.Sort. So, we would be just changing the most common use-case to sort.Slice. The remaining 3 will still use sort.Sort.

This was partly inspired by your CL which replaced lot of sort.Sort usages with sort.Slice. 😄 I just happened to look up the definition of sort.Slice and this idea hit me.

@mvdan
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mvdan commented Sep 23, 2017

I see - it sounds like the package examples should mention sort.Slice, yes. Feel free to send a CL. I don't guarantee it will be merged, and I won't approve it since I'm not that familiar with the package, but it seems like a good idea to me.

@mvdan mvdan changed the title sort: change the main example to use sort.Slice instead of sort.Sort sort: change the main example to use Slice instead of Sort Sep 23, 2017
@kennygrant
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There are already sort.Slice and sort.SliceStable example, they just aren't featured in the top 4 examples:

https://golang.org/pkg/sort/#Slice
https://golang.org/pkg/sort/#SliceStable

I agree they should have more prominence.

@agnivade
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Exactly. This is about getting sort.Slice some more love.

@gopherbot
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Change https://golang.org/cl/65710 mentions this issue: sort: change main example to use Slice instead of Sort

@golang golang locked and limited conversation to collaborators Sep 24, 2018
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