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At 7:10 AM +1000 9/22/03, Rick Marshall wrote:
>don't get me wrong - efficiency is important, i should know - it took me
>10 years to get my database working fast enough, but what i'm saying is
>it's irrelevant if the project doesn't work first.
>
>in software engineering terms, bubble sort is a lousy mechanism, but it
>works (and you'd be amazed at just how many hackers still use it). once
>we knew sorting works we could develop better mechanisms - and quick
>sort remains the staple of in memory sorting - because it's
>mathematically as good as it gets - and it's heaps (excuse the pun)
>better.
You need to go back and re-read your Knuth. There are several
algorithms that are faster than quicksort. For example, Radix sort is
O(n) with a relatively small key size and it doesn't suffer the
O(n**2) behavior when the data is already close to being sorted.
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Don Bate | Specializing in Consulting and Mentoring in
Bate Consulting, Inc | Object-Oriented Technologies,
| Software Architecture, and Software Process
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