The Standard Librarian: Sorting in the Standard Library
By Matthew H. Austern, August 01, 2001
The Standard C++ library provides a half dozen different tools for sorting, and knowing when to use which one is an essential part of knowing how to use the library properly. In some cases, the choice of sort function can make an enormous difference in performance.
August 2001 C++ Experts Forum/The Standard Librarian/Listing 2
Listing 2: Measurements — Sorting a vector<string>
(only main is shown; everything else is the same as in Listing
1)
int main(int argc, const char** argv)
{
if (argc != 2) {
std::cerr << "Usage: "
<< argv[0] << " <file>"
<< std::endl;
return 1;
}
std::ifstream in(argv[1]);
if (!in) {
std::cerr << "Can't open " << argv[1] << std::endl;
return 1;
}
vector<string> v;
string str;
while (std::getline(in, str))
v.push_back(str);
std::cout << "Sorting a file of "
<< v.size() << " lines."
<< std::endl;
vector<pair<string, double> > results;
results.push_back(do_sort(v));
results.push_back(do_stable_sort(v));
results.push_back(do_heap_sort(v));
results.push_back(do_list_sort(v));
results.push_back(do_set_sort(v));
report(results, std::cout);
return 0;
}
