On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:07:46 -0800 Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisp...@gmx.com> wrote:
> It would be nice to get a fairly extensive lists of types to sort with a > variety > of values and number of values of those types and set up an extensive set of > benchmarking tests. Heck, such a set of types and collections of those types > could be a useful benchmarking tool for a variety of algorithms. Then we'll > have > a good base to build from and compare to. If we're going to tweak algorithms > for > efficiency, we're going to want to some thorough tests so that we're sure > that any > tweaks are actually overall improvements. It's easy to find cases which do > poorly > for a particular algorithm. It can even be fairly easy to tweak an algorithm > to > improve that particular case. But it's not so easy to be sure that that tweak > is On one hand, having sut a source data set would be nice nice. On the other, such general-purpose algorithm simply cannot perform well; so, I would not bother much. If one does need efficiency, then it is necessary to use or write a custom sort adapted to the data type (int), the value space ([1,99]), the actual distribution (many small values), the degree of pre-ordering of source data (bigger values have higher chances to come last),... The performance ratio between a specific and general algorithm can be huge, as you know. Denis -- -- -- -- -- -- -- vit esse estrany ☣ spir.wikidot.com
