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Re: error with sort

David Fanning wrote:

> R.Bauer (R.Bauer@fz-juelich.de) writes:
>
> > Dear David,
> >
> > that's all right, but why get I different results on different Operation
> > Systems?
>
> I'm reliably informed that you get different results because
> IDL uses the system supplied qsort() routine on each platform,
> and as they are different implementations, they are free to
> return different sub-orders for the identical elements.
>
> But, as I say, I can't see how it makes much difference,
> although I did appreciate Wayne Landsman's perspective.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> --
> David Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting
> Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
> Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155

Answer: When you have 'parallel' arrays.  In my field, you might have
pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed.  Say the pressure is nearly
steady for much of your data.  You sort all of the arrays based on the
pressure.  You then look at values of temperature, humidity, and wind.  For
subranges where the pressure has the same value, the other arrays have widely
varying values.  It is nice to have them come up in the same order for the
same values of pressure.

For this to make a 'real' difference, you have to be doing something to the
other arrays.  For statistical work, I might be putting the arrays into
'bins'.  Different ordering, different bins.  Harder to debug.

Furthermore, the 'steady' pressure values might be in say chronological
order.  This arrangement might be meaningful in sampling the data.  You might
wish to sample 'steady' pressures every 3rd hour.  You COULD do this if the
pressure stayed in chronological order, would be harder otherwise.

And of course, if you are testing any kind of sorting or sampling or
statistical algorithm of your own, a consistent sort is nice.  Very annoying
to run a statistical algorithm, and get different values with back-to-back
runs of the same data, same algorithm.

-- Dave --