Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.
This chapter describes functions for sorting data, both directly and indirectly (using an index). All the functions use the heapsort algorithm. Heapsort is an O(N \log N) algorithm which operates in-place. It does not require any additional storage and provides consistent performance. The running time for its worst-case (ordered data) is not significantly longer than the average and best cases. Note that the heapsort algorithm does not preserve the relative ordering of equal elements -- it is an unstable sort. However the resulting order of equal elements will be consistent across different platforms when using these functions.
The following function provides a simple alternative to the standard
library function qsort. It is intended for systems lacking
qsort, not as a replacement for it. The function qsort
should be used whenever possible, as it will be faster and can provide
stable ordering of equal elements. Documentation for qsort is
available in the GNU C Library Reference Manual.
The functions described in this section are defined in the header file 'gsl_heapsort.h'.
This function sorts the count elements of the array array, each of size size, into ascending order using the comparison function compare. The type of the comparison function is defined by,
int (*gsl_comparison_fn_t) (const void * a,
const void * b)
A comparison function should return a negative integer if the first
argument is less than the second argument, 0 if the two arguments
are equal and a positive integer if the first argument is greater than
the second argument.
For example, the following function can be used to sort doubles into ascending numerical order.
int
compare_doubles (const double * a,
const double * b)
{
if (*a > *b)
return 1;
else if (*a < *b)
return -1;
else
return 0;
}
The appropriate function call to perform the sort is,
gsl_heapsort (array, count, sizeof(double),
compare_doubles);
Note that unlike qsort the heapsort algorithm cannot be made into
a stable sort by pointer arithmetic. The trick of comparing pointers for
equal elements in the comparison function does not work for the heapsort
algorithm. The heapsort algorithm performs an internal rearrangement of
the data which destroys its initial ordering.
This function indirectly sorts the count elements of the array array, each of size size, into ascending order using the comparison function compare. The resulting permutation is stored in p, an array of length n. The elements of p give the index of the array element which would have been stored in that position if the array had been sorted in place. The first element of p gives the index of the least element in array, and the last element of p gives the index of the greatest element in array. The array itself is not changed.
The following functions will sort the elements of an array or vector,
either directly or indirectly. They are defined for all real and integer
types using the normal suffix rules. For example, the float
versions of the array functions are gsl_sort_float and
gsl_sort_float_index. The corresponding vector functions are
gsl_sort_vector_float and gsl_sort_vector_float_index. The
prototypes are available in the header files 'gsl_sort_float.h'
'gsl_sort_vector_float.h'. The complete set of prototypes can be
included using the header files 'gsl_sort.h' and
'gsl_sort_vector.h'.
There are no functions for sorting complex arrays or vectors, since the ordering of complex numbers is not uniquely defined. To sort a complex vector by magnitude compute a real vector containing the magnitudes of the complex elements, and sort this vector indirectly. The resulting index gives the appropriate ordering of the original complex vector.
The functions described in this section select the k smallest or largest elements of a data set of size N. The routines use an O(kN) direct insertion algorithm which is suited to subsets that are small compared with the total size of the dataset. For example, the routines are useful for selecting the 10 largest values from one million data points, but not for selecting the largest 100,000 values. If the subset is a significant part of the total dataset it may be faster to sort all the elements of the dataset directly with an O(N \log N) algorithm and obtain the smallest or largest values that way.
The following functions find the indices of the k smallest or largest elements of a dataset,
The rank of an element is its order in the sorted data. The rank is the inverse of the index permutation, p. It can be computed using the following algorithm,
for (i = 0; i < p->size; i++)
{
size_t pi = p->data[i];
rank->data[pi] = i;
}
This can be computed directly from the function
gsl_permutation_inverse(rank,p).
The following function will print the rank of each element of the vector v,
void
print_rank (gsl_vector * v)
{
size_t i;
size_t n = v->size;
gsl_permutation * perm = gsl_permutation_alloc(n);
gsl_permutation * rank = gsl_permutation_alloc(n);
gsl_sort_vector_index (perm, v);
gsl_permutation_inverse (rank, perm);
for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
double vi = gsl_vector_get(v, i);
printf ("element = %d, value = %g, rank = %d\n",
i, vi, rank->data[i]);
}
gsl_permutation_free (perm);
gsl_permutation_free (rank);
}
The following example shows how to use the permutation p to print the elements of the vector v in ascending order,
gsl_sort_vector_index (p, v);
for (i = 0; i < v->size; i++)
{
double vpi = gsl_vector_get (v, p->data[i]);
printf ("order = %d, value = %g\n", i, vpi);
}
The next example uses the function gsl_sort_smallest to select
the 5 smallest numbers from 100000 uniform random variates stored in an
array,
#include <gsl/gsl_rng.h>
#include <gsl/gsl_sort_double.h>
int
main (void)
{
const gsl_rng_type * T;
gsl_rng * r;
size_t i, k = 5, N = 100000;
double * x = malloc (N * sizeof(double));
double * small = malloc (k * sizeof(double));
gsl_rng_env_setup();
T = gsl_rng_default;
r = gsl_rng_alloc (T);
for (i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
x[i] = gsl_rng_uniform(r);
}
gsl_sort_smallest (small, k, x, 1, N);
printf ("%d smallest values from %d\n", k, N);
for (i = 0; i < k; i++)
{
printf ("%d: %.18f\n", i, small[i]);
}
return 0;
}
The output lists the 5 smallest values, in ascending order,
$ ./a.out 5 smallest values from 100000 0: 0.000003489200025797 1: 0.000008199829608202 2: 0.000008953968062997 3: 0.000010712770745158 4: 0.000033531803637743
The subject of sorting is covered extensively in Knuth's Sorting and Searching,
The Heapsort algorithm is described in the following book,
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.