[libstdc++] pdqsort - a faster std::sort

[Marc Glisse]

Hi Chris,

did you ever get a chance to look at it? I was reminded of it because I 
have an application here where one call to sort is about 1/3 of the total 
running time. Using sort takes 3.46s, while using stable_sort takes 3.08s 
(yes, it is faster...) and pdqsort is only 2.85s.

(I didn't look at the implementation myself)

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015, Christopher Jefferson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Sorry, I've been very busy and not had time to look at this. I plan to
> do so this week.
>
> One final request (sorry!) Have you tried benchmarking this against
> std::sort with -std=c++03, and with a more expensive type (I recommend
> making some vectors of length... 100,000? Make some easy to compare
> (make first element different) and some expensive to compare (make
> only last elements different).
>
> Chris
>
>
> On 12 April 2015 at 07:11, Orson Peters <orsonpeters@gmail.com> wrote:
>> All right, I've put in the work and made the pdqsort source libstdc++
>> compatible. I've created a seperate branch on Github where I published all my
>> changes - you can look at the commit history to see exactly how I got from my
>> original code to the libstdc++ compatible code.
>>
>> https://github.com/orlp/pdqsort/blob/libstdc%2B%2B-merge/pdqsort.h
>>
>> While testing I found one minor bug in pdqsort. In the insertion sort routine I
>> decremented (but not dereferenced) an iterator before 'begin', which is not
>> allowed. The fix was trivial (move decrement after range check instead of
>> before).
>>
>> After fixing the above bug pdqsort passes all libstdc++ tests. You can confirm
>> this yourself by inserting the above linked code into bits/stl_algo.h, renaming
>> sort to stdsort (or anything else) and pdqsort to sort.
>>
>> A couple of notes that maybe should be addressed before merging the code:
>>
>>  - I have attempted to follow the style guide where possible, but it's very
>>    likely I've made a mistake here and there due to unfamiliarity.
>>
>>  - My insertion sort routines (__pdq_insertion_sort and
>>    __pdq_unguarded_insertion_sort) are different than those found in
>>    libstdc++. To my knowledge __pdq_insertion_sort is strictly better than
>>    __insertion_sort, because I only move an element if it's out of place -
>>    __insertion_sort always moves an element twice, even if already placed
>>    correctly. __pdq_unguarded_insertion_sort is a trade-off vs
>>    __unguarded_insertion_sort. The pdq version compares iterators on every
>>    iteration, the libstdc++ version does an initial check against the first
>>    element in the array. For pointers I'm almost certain my implementation is
>>    faster (the comparison is virtually free), but it's not a clear cut in the
>>    general case.
>>
>>    I'm convinced my insertion sort can replace libstdc++s without issue, but I'm
>>    not sure about the unguarded version.
>>
>>  - I have marked all functions inline for now - I don't know which ones we'd
>>    really want to mark inline and which ones we don't.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Marc Glisse <marc.glisse@inria.fr> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 11 Apr 2015, François Dumont wrote:
>>>
>>>>    I think comparator is taken by copy simply because the Standard
>>>> signature is taking it by copy. We expect gcc to do a good job to optimize
>>>> away the intermediate copy.
>>>
>>>
>>> While this is true, I don't think it is a reason to force extra copies
>>> internally when it is just as easy to avoid them (as long as someone is
>>> willing to write and test the patch). For iterators in particular, passing
>>> by value is useful to force the decay from array to pointer, but there is no
>>> need to decay an already decayed type.
>>>
>>> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2013-09/msg00220.html
>>>
>>> (I didn't feel strongly enough to write the patch myself, and still don't)
>>>
>>> --
>>> Marc Glisse
>

-- 
Marc Glisse