Reputation: 131

Linux Sort command

I would like to know which sorting algorithm the linux SORT command uses?

Upvotes: 8

Answers (2)

Reputation: 146221

It¹ uses mergesort rather than quicksort or heapsort for two reasons:

mergesort is a stable sort and typically the efficient quicksort implementations are not
while it may do more swaps or moves it does fewer comparisons and so tends to work better with text input

^{1. Linux distros are free to choose their own sort utility but I imagine virtually all use GNU sort so I have described that.}

Upvotes: 11

Reputation: 1731

Upvotes: 7