From: Deborah Wyatt <lists@...>
Date: 2012-07-30T13:18:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with exercise from Chris Pine's Ruby Book: Sort without using .sort

I used to program back in the 80s and my method is totally different 
from what most people would do now, but I wanted to share how I solved 
the problem.  There are a lot of easier ways, but this does work.

----
# a little program to accept a list of words, sort them without using 
the sort method, and output them in alphabetical order
j = 0
words = []
words2 = []
a_word = 'a' # dummy initialization to get into the until loop below
i = 0
puts "Type a word and press <Enter> (Enter a blank line to quit):"
# Loop to accept an unspecified number of words-- creates original array
until a_word.empty?
  a_word = gets.chomp
  if a_word != ""
    words.push a_word
    i += 1
  end # end if
end # end until

while words.length > 0
  i = words.length - 1
  # I will sort by looking for the lowest value word in the original 
array and pushing it on to the new array
    a_word = words[0] # initialize with the first element in the array
    a_index = 0
    for j in 1..i
      b_word = words[j] # assign  second element to a var
      if a_word.upcase > b_word.upcase  # compare the two words
        a_word = words[j]
        a_index = j  # variable so I can reference the words pushed onto 
the new array
      end  # end if
    end  # end for
    words2.push a_word  # push smallest word onto new array
    words.delete_at(a_index) # delete the lowest element in the original 
array
    i -= words.length
end # end while
puts words2

-- 
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