Re: quicksort for linked list

[Michal Jaegermann <michal@harddata.com>]

On Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 07:50:06PM +0100, Martin Mares wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> > Well, not really in this situation, after a simple modification.  It is
> > trivial to show that using "shorter interval sorted first" approach one
> > can bound an amount of an extra memory, on stack or otherwise, and by a
> > rather small number.
> 
> By O(log N) which is in reality a small number :)

Assuming that we sort a full range of 32-bit numbers (pointers on a
32-bit CPU, for example, are numbers of that kind but usually a range
can be narrowed down quite substantially) then with a bit of a careful
programming you need, I think, something like 16 extra 4-byte words or
maybe even a bit less.  I do not remember precisely, as I was doing this
exercise a long time ago, but even if this is 32, and you need carefuly
constructed example to need them all these extra cells, I still think
that this is not a huge amount of memory.  Especially when every element
of a list you are sorting is likely quite a bit bigger.

Exponents are something which grows these numbers pretty fast. :-)

  Michal