intersort sorts slices of arbitrary objects according to the rules of Go's
fmtsort package. fmtsort is an internal package and thus cannot be imported
directly; however, its behavior is exposed via the fmt package when printing
maps. So we can sort arbitrary objects by sticking them in a map, printing it,
and parsing the result.
In other words, this package is an abomination and should not be used for anything. May the Go maintainers have mercy on my soul.
NOTE: This package requires Go 1.12.1.
ints := []int{3, 1, 2}
intersort.Sort(ints) // [1, 2, 3]
strs := []string{"b", "c", "a"}
intersort.Sort(strs) // [a, b, c]
type Point struct {
X, Y int
}
points := []Point{{2, 1}, {1, 1}, {1, 0}}
intersort.Sort(points) // [{1, 0}, {1, 1}, {2, 1}]You can even sort differing types!
objs := []interface{}{3, true, 1, "wat", http.DefaultClient, false}
sort.Sort(intersort.Slice(objs)) // [false, true, 1, 3, wat, &{<nil> <nil> <nil> 0s}]However, the results of this may vary, and in general are unpredictable; see golang/go#30398.
I tend to think that exposing the comparison function would be an attractive nuisance. - Ian Lance Taylor
It was a deliberate decision to keep this implementation private. - Rob Pike
Sorting [arbitrary objects] is not even possible in the general case. - cznic
This should not be done. - Rob Pike