You need a 'min_str', min_str_i' and 'min_num' to really cover all bases.
You can get most of the way there with multimethods. Which, fortunately, Perl 6 has:
multi max (Str *@candidates) {
reduce {$^a gt $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @candidates;
}
multi max (Num *@candidates) {
reduce {$^a > $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @candidates;
}
However, I suspect that won't be sufficiently Lazy for Perl 6. So my preference is for a max function that selects what kind of comparison to do, based on call context:
sub max (*@args) {
if want~~Str { reduce {$^a gt $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @args }
else { reduce {$^a > $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @args }
}
$biggest_str = ~max @values; # Str context, so use gt
$biggest_num = +max @values; # Num context, so use >
$biggest_num = max @values; # scalar context, default to >
And to get all the way there (i.e. to allow for user-specified comparisons such as case-insensitive), max would have an optional closure argument (just as sort does now) so that the comparator could be explicitly specified:
# Let call context decide...
multi max (*@args) {
if want~~Str { reduce {$^a gt $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @args }
else { reduce {$^a > $^b ?? $^a :: $^b} @args }
}
# Let the user specify...
multi max (&compare, *@args) {
reduce {compare($^a,$^b)>=0 ?? $^a :: $^b} @args;
}
$biggest_str = ~max @values;
$biggest_num = +max @values;
$biggest_num = max @values;
$biggest_mag = max {abs $^a <=> abs $^b} @values;
$biggest_lookup = max {%hash{$^a} cmp %hash{$^b} @values;
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