[fpc-pascal] Elegant way to switch sort mechanism in TSortedCollection?

[Jim Leonard]

Sorry, some Turbo Pascal-isms in my initial mail -- I see that 
FreePascal's TCollection class has an explicit .Sort method so this 
helps me re-sort on demand, but it doesn't help me switch the Compare 
method.  So, my question still stands.

On 3/12/2014 1:51 PM, Jim Leonard wrote:
> I'm working on a project that utilizes a TSortedCollection to help keep
> items sorted during processing.  There is a need to re-sort the
> collection by different criteria on-demand as the program runs.
> (Different sort orders are an integral part of the processing.)
>
> Unless I'm missing something, TSortedCollection lacks the ability to
> change the Compare method after initialization and/or explicitly re-sort
> the collection on-demand.  I was planning on handling each new (re)sort by:
>
> 1. Initializing a new TSortedCollection with the desired Compare method
> 2. Copying the contents from the old collection to the new one
> 3. Swap collection pointers; destroy the old collection.
>
> This works without much penalty because the collection will never get
> beyond a reasonable size, but the implementation makes me cringe.  Is
> there a more elegant way to do this (without writing my own sort
> routines for a plain TCollection)?


-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)
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