-bowerbird wrote:

>go ken go!
>
>-bowerbird
>
>p.s.  i'm sorting millions of words these days (literally!, or
>at least my machine is...), so i'm following this with interest...
>
>p.p.s.  i too wish i could understand jay's programs,
>at least enough to modify them for my own use,
>but alas they are just too much fb3/c++-ish for me...
>(what does a line that says "p++" mean, anyway?)

-bird,

To increment a number by one in your 1984 FBII world you would write:

p = p + 1

In early FB^3 we would write:

INC( p)

or perhaps:

p += 1

But Alain, Jay and Robert P. (and now myself) simply use:

p++

which is straight out of C++ but is also very handy.

Don your poet's cap and think of how short your posts could be if you 
used the FB^3 shortcut syntax! Why, this post could have been:

ken++

>p.p.p.s.  by the way, the staz sort in the str# routines is great,
>i dunno which kind it is, but it works very fast...
>
>p.p.p.p.s.  ya know, i haven't looked at tedd's sort,
>which is said to be so fast it's done before it starts...

The best sort routines in the binary world are found in BBEdit.

>p.p.p.p.p.s.  list mom, is this enough p.s.'s to excuse my 1-line post?
>(tell you the truth, i would've rather it had remained at a single line.
>and i bet most recipients would agree...)

p.p.p.p.p.p.s Not to worry, poets are the exception. But then again, 
why does a poet want to live in an Orwellian 1984?

Go figure...

Anyway, thanks for the nice encouragement.

Perhaps someday I shall climb this mountain...

...on my way to the next.

Ken