10.3.7 Sorting poly_ints

poly_int provides the following routine for sorting:

compare_sizes_for_sort (a, b)

Compare a and b in reverse lexicographical order (that is, compare the highest-indexed coefficients first). This can be useful when sorting data structures, since it has the effect of separating constant and non-constant values. If all values are nonnegative, the constant values come first.

Note that the values do not necessarily end up in numerical order. For example, ‘1 + 1x’ would come after ‘100’ in the sort order, but may well be less than ‘100’ at run time.