I think there's something like that in the Kernighan and Pike book I referred to elsewhere in this thread, and also, that code looks similar to this technique:

I think there's something like that in the Kernighan and Pike book I referred to elsewhere in this thread, and also, that code looks similar to this technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorate-sort-undecorate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorate-sort-undecorate , i.e. Decorate-Sort-Undecorate (DSU), related to the Schwartzian transform.