Re: Sort function modifies the table being sorted?

[Nicola Fontana <ntd@...>]

Il giorno Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:40:31 -0700
Paul K <paulclinger@yahoo.com> ha scritto:

> I suspect so too, but (1) it's not stated anywhere that it's against
> the rules and (2) changing to "o[a] and 0 or 9" fixes it, which should
> make no difference.
> 
> And I'm only reading the table, which should not trigger any
> modification in it (even though it may be in some strange/intermediate
> state).

I think the problem is your comparation logic. The following code
raises the same problem without accessing the table:

a = {1,2,3,4}
table.sort(a, function(a,b)
    print(a, b)
    return true
end)

and this is what I get:

4	1
2	4
3	4
4	4
1	4
nil	4
lua: a.lua:2: invalid order function for sorting
stack traceback:
	[C]: in function 'sort'
	a.lua:2: in main chunk
	[C]: ?

It seems when compare returns invalid results (in the case above
both row 1 and 5 return true with swapped values) a nil is introduced.

Ciao.
-- 
Nicola