[REBOL] Re: More on expressions
From: sunandadh:aol at: 2-Feb-2003 16:55
Joel:
> I'm puzzled that you said it didn't work for you. Here's a small
> torture test that shows the right result every time:
Sorry for that. My mistake. I cut and pasted the code incorrectly into my
torture test. When pasted straight, it does indeed produce the median every
time.
By way of compensation or entertainment, here's another slightly demented way
of doing it.
The first three additions must give us Median + twice Maximum. So a quick
subtraction of twice the maximum, and the job is done.
(max a b) + (max b c) + (max a c) - (2 * (max a max b c))
Of course this only works on the original spec -- numbers -- but it's
better
than your solution because it uses less min's.....So this is *the*
solution to remember if challenged to do it without using if, sort, first,
second, third, either or min. One day that might save your life. To make it
work with non-numbers, tweak it into inserting and removing items in a block,
Sunanda
Whose hoping his code examples will win him the first ever "Rebol without a
clue" award.
