Radix sort

In computer science, radix sort is a non-comparative integer sorting algorithm that sorts data with integer keys by grouping keys by the individual digits which share the same significant position and value. A positional notation is required, but because integers can represent strings of characters (e.g., names or dates) and specially formatted floating point numbers, radix sort is not limited to integers. Radix sort dates back as far as 1887 to the work of Herman Hollerith on tabulating machines. In computer science, radix sort is a non-comparative integer sorting algorithm that sorts data with integer keys by grouping keys by the individual digits which share the same significant position and value. A positional notation is required, but because integers can represent strings of characters (e.g., names or dates) and specially formatted floating point numbers, radix sort is not limited to integers. Radix sort dates back as far as 1887 to the work of Herman Hollerith on tabulating machines. Most digital computers internally represent all of their data as electronic representations of binary numbers, so processing the digits of integer representations by groups of binary digit representations is most convenient. Radix sorts can be implemented to start at either the most significant digit (MSD) or least significant digit (LSD). For example, when sorting the number 1234 into a list, one could start with the 1 or the 4. LSD radix sorts typically use the following sorting order: short keys come before longer keys, and then keys of the same length are sorted lexicographically. This coincides with the normal order of integer representations, such as the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.