Category: algorithms | Component type: function |
template <class RandomAccessIterator> void sort(RandomAccessIterator first, RandomAccessIterator last); template <class RandomAccessIterator, class StrictWeakOrdering> void sort(RandomAccessIterator first, RandomAccessIterator last, StrictWeakOrdering comp);
The two versions of sort differ in how they define whether one element is less than another. The first version compares objects using operator<, and the second compares objects using a function object comp.
int A[] = {1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7}; const int N = sizeof(A) / sizeof(int); sort(A, A + N); copy(A, A + N, ostream_iterator<int>(cout, " ")); // The output is " 1 2 4 5 7 8".
[1] Stable sorting is sometimes important if you are sorting records that have multiple fields: you might, for example, want to sort a list of people by first name and then by last name. The algorithm stable_sort does guarantee to preserve the relative ordering of equivalent elements.
[2] Earlier versions of sort used the quicksort algorithm (C. A. R. Hoare, Comp. J. 5, 1962), using a pivot chosen by median of three (R. C. Singleton, CACM 12, 1969). Quicksort has O(N log(N)) average complexity, but quadratic worst-case complexity. See section 5.2.2 of Knuth for a discussion. (D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3: Sorting and Searching. Addison-Wesley, 1975.) The current implementation of sort, however, uses the introsort algorithm (D. R. Musser, "Introspective Sorting and Selection Algorithms", Software Practice and Experience 27(8):983, 1997.) whose worst case complexity is O(N log(N)). Introsort is very similar to median-of-three quicksort, and is at least as fast as quicksort on average.