From: Ellen K. 

True Confessions, or something:   I have a big nasty reporting
application (nasty because it has to read legacy data in a
"database" of DBF files which aren't relational, aren't even 1NF,
and can barely understand the most simple SQL) and I use a lot of arrays in
it, especially arrays of user-defined types... and when I have to sort them
I use a self-written bubble sort.   AFAIK, VB6 does not have a method to
sort an array.  ADO recordsets have a Sort method, but for most of this I
don't have recordsets and they wouldn't have worked, or would only have
made the program even gnarlier.

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 13:05:49 -0800, Tony Williams 
wrote in message :

>Geo wrote:
>> "John Beckett"
 wrote in message
>> news:419f1666.28883121{at}216.144.1.254...
>>
>>
>>>    // In practice, call the library qsort function.
>>
>>
>> See now this is the part that really ticks me off, we were never shown a
>> library function called qsort or even a way to find out if one exists. Seems
>> to me library functions are one of the most useful features of C++ compared
>> to other languages but they have shown us nothing about how to take
>> advantage of what's available. I can understand not showing us MFC but they
>> could have at least allowed us to use functions or classes we find on the
>> net.
>
>Maybe you're ready to take another look at the STL now. The C "way" is
>to use library functions, and you're right that there are many of them,
>but you can't guarantee that they are all available on all platforms
>unless they're POSIX standard.
>
>The C++ "way" is to find a good template library, subclass your objects
>and use the methods provided by the library. For example, the STL
>provides a sort algorithm that's at least as good as qsort and which is
>just as easy to use.
>
>BTW, just so you know where I'm coming from, I prefer to grub around
>with low level code which hits the hardware directly and, IMO, C with
>embedded assembler is the only sane way to do this. However, these days
>I spend most of my time with large higher level programs and that's
>where C++ really shines. Apart from exceptions, but that's another story.
>
>I suppose that using bubble sort is ok if you're being asked to
>implement a sorting algorithm, but if you're being asked to sort some
>items then learn how to use existing methods/library functions. It's a
>valuable lesson because using library functions is much faster/easier
>and less error-prone than rolling your own. Once that clicks you'll see
>a whole world of code out there just waiting for you to use it.
>
>I know this is an NT group, but I suggest grabbing a Linux distro and
>reading a few man pages. For this example a quick "apropos sort" would
>have pointed you in the right direction.
>
>I'm finding it very interesting reading about your progress. Thanks for
>posting it and I hope you don't mind the back-seat driving.

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