From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
Date: 2003-09-17T23:37:11+09:00
Subject: Re: What's New and Shiny in Ruby 1.8.0?

On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 01:35:40AM +0900, Brett H. Williams wrote:
> On Aug  6, Harry Ohlsen wrote:
> >   sorted = people.sort_by { |p| [p.last_name, p.first_name, p.salary] }
> 
> I really like this.  But is there a simple easy way to get a descending
> sort here without reverting to sorted = people.sort { ... } ?

How about  

 sorted = people.sort_by { |p| [p.last_name, p.first_name, p.salary] }.reverse


I haven't looked, but I suspect you can't selectively make individual
criteria ascending/descending.  Now, if we had a #stable_sort_by,
then we could chain them together to get the desired
results without crafting complex comparisons . . . :)

-Mark