This Sort-Class can be used to retrieve the elements in a one-dimensional table of strings in either ascending or descending sequence. The table itself is not altered in any way by this process, rather pointers into the table are returned which point to the elements in the table in the requested order.
Tests on a 1800 MHz Athlon processor have shown that the Sort is in fact the fastest I know, sorting 100,000 elements on a five byte random sort key in under 0.3 seconds. The speed varies only very slightly with the number of elements to be sorted, so one million elements take about three seconds to sort. Any special presorting has no measurable effect on speed (Quicksort by contrast is almost killed by a presorted sequence).
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Umm, the items in the array are still in the exact same order? It is like the code does nothing. I made it output the array to two listboxes (with 10000 items), one with the array items before and one after. Are the sort results stored some other way? (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
No Vesa, they are not. Why should they? You get them one by on in sorted order and it is up to you what you do with them. (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
Gandolf: Did you compile it? Because that's roughliy the speed when the code is interpreted in the IDE. (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
This code is excellent! On a 280MHz Win95 machine it takes 8.2 seconds to sort 100,000 items in the IDE and 4.1 seconds to sort 100,000 items as an .exe.
This is amazing performance for a legacy system.
Thanks for sharing! 5 Stars!
Sincerely, Ed Porter (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
Hi Ulli, although it comes as no suprise you've done an excellent job yet again. 5 globes for the code and an added 5 globes for taking the time to write up some documentation for it:-) (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
100000 elements sorted in 0,4994375 seconds with 63386 distinct keys :-) thank you Ulli, this goes into my codecollection for sure :-) (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
8/14/2004 3:37:39 AM:
The code is, as usual, magnificent, but most users (such as Vesa) will want an array of pointers for subsequent processing of the sorted list. This can be done by adding the lines: Ptr(Nxt)=Pointer Nxt=Nxt+1 in Ulli's Sort_NextPointer routine, with the Ptr array and Nxt suitably initialised. But I think most folk would prefer the Class to include this pointer array so they didn't have to mess around during the sort. It's easy for a user to add, but it might be nice if Ulli could include it in an official minor upgrade to this wonderful code. Steve
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Steve: what's the difference between subsequent processing of the pointers (one by one) once they are in an array of pointers - and processing the pointers as the come (one by one)? (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
One small tweak: In my tests, AscB is about twice as fast as Asc. With code as written, 1.54675 for Asc, 1.468 for AscB Again, great code.
(If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
8/14/2004 9:40:21 AM:
Ulli, Often I want to interact with the sorted data in an intelligent way. For example, I might become interested in the 59th element then might want to see what the 58th and 60th are. If I find out that I'm interested in the 59th element without having a permanent pointer to the 58th then I will have no way of doing this. Hence my need for a permanent pointer array rather than processing things on the fly. Hope this helps
Steve
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Steve: Yes, I understand, but then again it's easy to build that array of pointers yourself. Why build it by default (causing additional overhead) if it is not needed in the majority of cases? (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
But how about sorting "unicode" strings? AscB probably doesn't work for those. So what if somebody wants to sort Japanese or Arabian for example? (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
his code is great and most PSC'ers will agree. But nobody mentioned the documentation, which is superb. In brief : creative thinking, nice code and proper documentation makes this submission excellent for learning and on top a usefull and ready-to-use tool. Heaven on earth. (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
Very Impressive!!! I agree with Paul totally, great documentation, many people can and hopefully will learn alot about the way software development should be done from this excellent submission. (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
I have been looking for a fast sort routine for my Pocket PC applications. Now all I have to do is convert this code to VB .net (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
Looks like fabulous code. Like Vesa said above, I don't understand where the output is. But I am not an advanced programmer. I searched for NextPointerEvent which is located in the cSort class file, but not sure where you would add a listbox line of code to demonstrate it in real time. Could anyone explain to me the changes necessary for it to be seen in action?
phishbowlah@hotmail.com (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
12/26/2004 7:30:22 PM:
If I put a breakpoint at Erase Anchor, Chain 'Release Memory, (program as from zip file by the way) should I be able to see the sort order in chain(x), with chain(x) holding the pointer value back into the table? Chain(x) doesn't appear to do this on my testing in either asc or desc! Where is it held in sorted order? (If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
I'm not really understand about execution flow on this program and how its work. Perhaps by writing my own code, I can understand.
Once i put these syntax right before button click procedure ends:
Set cSort = Nothing End Sub
Everything is destroyed!!
This is a program for indexing array of string. Not a real sorting program, that's what I think.
Anyway, is there an option to make this index become permanent and automatically updated when an array modified? :)
(If this comment was disrespectful, please report it.)
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8/13/2004 11:40:47 AM: 
