I find both suggestions good; either would be an improvement.
/ Johan Sundström (folkskådare)
Previous text:
2003-04-26 15:48: Subject: Re: sort
Yes, stable sorting comes practically for free when get_order is used.
There's more overhead in the most common case when it uses sort_array_destructively. If get_alpha_order/order_array is used instead it takes about twice the time. If a position vector is added to sort_array_destructively it gets about 15-20% slower. When objects are sorted this overhead is lost completely compared to calling lfuns.
So what do you all think? Is it worth it to make sort() stable? I think it is since not very much of the time in an average Pike program is spent sorting, so the overall impact would be very low. A third option is to make sort() stable and introduce an unstable_sort() for those occasions where it really matters.
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS