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From: ge@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl (Ge' Weijers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: Fast sorting and re-ordering routines for HP-28S
Message-ID: <553@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 4 Dec 89 09:45:51 GMT
References: <4533@druhi.ATT.COM>
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Lines: 29

neal@druhi.ATT.COM (USENET News Administrator) writes:

>I typed in the sort function from the reference manual and was very
>disappointed with it.  First of all, it uses a bubble sort, which
>may be the most overused bad example around.  As Knuth said in 1973,
>"In short, the bubble sort seems to have nothing to recommend it, except
>a catchy name and the fact that it leads to some interesting theoretical
>problems."

>I implemented an insertion sort algorithm which is faster still, especially
>for data which is already nearly in order, but it still takes
>around 2 minutes to sort 50 random numbers (without using FAST).

Well, insertion sort is only better than bubble sort by a constant factor.
I'll try to write a sort routine that sorts 50 numbers in 30 seconds or so.
This should be possible. (I hope)

>It would seem that a natural way to speed things up would be to develop
>a machine-language implementation of the inner loop of the program.

Only after you've used a better algorithm. I'll get back on this.

>-Neal McBurnett, neal@druhi.att.com or att!druhi!neal

Ge' Weijers, ge@cs.kun.nl
Ge' Weijers                                    Internet/UUCP: ge@cs.kun.nl
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science,   (uunet.uu.net!cs.kun.nl!ge)
University of Nijmegen, Toernooiveld 1         
6525 ED Nijmegen, the Netherlands              tel. +3180612483 (UTC-2)