Comparison sort

A comparison sort is a type of sorting algorithm that only reads the list elements through a single abstract comparison operation (often a "less than or equal to" operator or a three-way comparison) that determines which of two elements should occur first in the final sorted list. The only requirement is that the operator obey two of the properties of a total order:

It is possible that both a ≤ b and b ≤ a; in this case either may come first in the sorted list. In a stable sort, the input order determines the sorted order in this case.

A metaphor for thinking about comparison sorts is that someone has a set of unlabelled weights and a balance scale. Their goal is to line up the weights in order by their weight without any information except that obtained by placing two weights on the scale and seeing which one is heavier (or if they weigh the same).

Some of the most well-known comparison sorts include:

There are fundamental limits on the performance of comparison sorts. A comparison sort must have an average-case lower bound of Ω(n log n) comparison operations, which is known as linearithmic time. This is a consequence of the limited information available through comparisons alone — or, to put it differently, of the vague algebraic structure of totally ordered sets. In this sense, mergesort, heapsort, and introsort are asymptotically optimal in terms of the number of comparisons they must perform, although this metric neglects other operations. Non-comparison sorts (such as the examples discussed below) can achieve O(n) performance by using operations other than comparisons, allowing them to sidestep this lower bound (assuming elements are constant-sized).

Note that comparison sorts may run faster on some lists; many adaptive sorts such as insertion sort run in O(n) time on an already-sorted or nearly-sorted list. The Ω(n log n) lower bound applies only to the case in which the input list can be in any possible order.

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