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Sorting

This chapter describes functions for sorting data, both directly and indirectly (using an index). All the functions use the heapsort algorithm. Heapsort is an @math{O(N \log N)} algorithm which operates in-place. It does not require any additional storage and provides consistent performance. The running time for its worst-case (ordered data) is not significantly longer than the average and best cases. Note that the heapsort algorithm does not preserve the relative ordering of equal elements -- it is an unstable sort. However the resulting order of equal elements will be consistent across different platforms when using these functions.


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