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Timsort is a hybrid, stable sorting algorithm, derived from merge sort and insertion sort, designed to perform well on many kinds of real-world data. It was implemented by Tim Peters in 2002 for use in the Python programming language. The algorithm finds subsequences of the data that are already ordered (runs) and uses them to sort the ...
Radix sort is an algorithm that sorts numbers by processing individual digits. n numbers consisting of k digits each are sorted in O(n · k) time. Radix sort can process digits of each number either starting from the least significant digit (LSD) or starting from the most significant digit (MSD). The LSD algorithm first sorts the list by the ...
Insertion sort is a simple sorting algorithm that builds the final sorted array (or list) one item at a time by comparisons. It is much less efficient on large lists than more advanced algorithms such as quicksort, heapsort, or merge sort. However, insertion sort provides several advantages:
In Python 2.4 and above, both the sorted() function and the in-place list.sort() method take a key= parameter that allows the user to provide a "key function" (like foo in the examples above). In Python 3 and above, use of the key function is the only way to specify a custom sort order (the previously supported cmp= parameter that allowed the ...
Merge sort parallelizes well due to the use of the divide-and-conquer method. Several different parallel variants of the algorithm have been developed over the years. Some parallel merge sort algorithms are strongly related to the sequential top-down merge algorithm while others have a different general structure and use the K-way merge method.
A list containing a single element is, by definition, sorted. Repeatedly merge sublists to create a new sorted sublist until the single list contains all elements. The single list is the sorted list. The merge algorithm is used repeatedly in the merge sort algorithm. An example merge sort is given in the illustration.
Such a component or property is called a sort key. For example, the items are books, the sort key is the title, subject or author, and the order is alphabetical. A new sort key can be created from two or more sort keys by lexicographical order. The first is then called the primary sort key, the second the secondary sort key, etc.
In Python, functions are first-class objects that can be created and passed around dynamically. Python's limited support for anonymous functions is the lambda construct. An example is the anonymous function which squares its input, called with the argument of 5: