Electronic Data Sorting

This paper presents results of a study of the fundamentals of sorting. Emphasis is placed on understanding sorting and on minimizing the time required to sort with electronic equipment of reasonable cost. Sorting is viewed as a combination of information gathering and item moving activities. Shannon´s communication theory measure of information is applied to assess the difficulty of various sorting problems. Bounds on the number of comparisons required to sort are developed, and optimal or near-optimal sorting schemes are described and investigated. Three abstract sorting models based on cyclic, linear, and randomaccess memories are defined. Optimal or near-optimal sorting methods are developed for the models and their parallel-register extensions. A brief review of the origin of the work and some of its hypotheses is also presented.