| RADIXSORT(3) | Library Functions Manual | RADIXSORT(3) | 
radixsort, sradixsort —
#include <limits.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
  
  radixsort(const
    u_char **base, int
    nmemb, u_char
    *table, u_int
    endbyte);
int
  
  sradixsort(const
    u_char **base, int
    nmemb, u_char
    *table, u_int
    endbyte);
radixsort() and sradixsort()
  functions are implementations of radix sort.
These functions sort an nmemb element array of pointers to byte strings, with the initial member of which is referenced by base. The byte strings may contain any values. End of strings is denoted by character which has same weight as user specified value endbyte. endbyte has to be between 0 and 255.
Applications may specify a sort order by providing the
    table argument. If non-NULL,
    table must reference an array of
    UCHAR_MAX + 1 bytes which contains the sort weight
    of each possible byte value. The end-of-string byte must have a sort weight
    of 0 or 255 (for sorting in reverse order). More than one byte may have the
    same sort weight. The table argument is useful for
    applications which wish to sort different characters equally, for example,
    providing a table with the same weights for A-Z as for a-z will result in a
    case-insensitive sort. If table is NULL, the contents
    of the array are sorted in ascending order according to the ASCII order of
    the byte strings they reference and endbyte has a
    sorting weight of 0.
The sradixsort() function is stable, that
    is, if two elements compare as equal, their order in the sorted array is
    unchanged. The sradixsort() function uses additional
    memory sufficient to hold nmemb pointers.
The radixsort() function is not stable,
    but uses no additional memory.
These functions are variants of most-significant-byte radix sorting; in particular, see D.E. Knuth's Algorithm R and section 5.2.5, exercise 10. They take linear time relative to the number of bytes in the strings.
EINVAL]Additionally, the sradixsort() function
    may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified
    for the library routine
    malloc(3).
Knuth, D.E., Sorting and Searching, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 3, pp. 170-178, 1968.
Paige, R., Three Partition Refinement Algorithms, SIAM J. Comput., No. 6, Vol. 16, 1987.
McIlroy, P., Computing Systems, Engineering Radix Sort, Vol. 6:1, pp. 5-27, 1993.
radixsort() function first appeared in
  4.4BSD.
| January 27, 1994 | NetBSD 9.4 |