LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Radix Sort: Digits
built 288 days ago
Radix Sort can ... take up more space than other sorting algorithms, since in addition to the array that will be sorted, you need to have a sublist for each of the possible digits or letters. If you are sorting pure English words, you will need at least 26 different sublists, and if you are sorting alphanumeric words or sentences, you will probably need more than 40 sublists in all!
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A radix sort is an algorithm, a procedure, which can rearrange integer representations based on the processing of individual digits in such a way that the integer representations are eventually in either ascending or descending order. Integer representations can be used to represent things such as strings of characters (names of people, places, things, the words and characters that you are reading now, dates, etc.) and specially formatted floating point numbers as well as integers. So, anything which can be represented as an ordered sequence of integer representations can be rearranged to be in order by a radix sort. 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. Two classifications of radix sorts are least significant digit (LSD) radix sorts and most significant digit (MSD) radix sorts. LSD radix sorts process the integer representations starting from the least significant digit and move the processing towards the most significant digit.
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A least significant digit (LSD) radix sort is a fast stable sorting algorithm which can be used to sort keys in lexicographic order. Keys may be a string of characters, or numerical digits in a given 'radix'. The processing of the keys begins at the least significant digit, the rightmost digit, and proceeds to the most significant digit, the leftmost digit. The sequence in which digits are processed by a least significant digit (LSD) radix sort is the opposite of the sequence in which digits are processed by a most significant digit (MSD) radix sort.
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Radix sorting is a technique for ordering a list of positive integer values. The values are successively ordered on digit positions, from right to left. This is accomplished by copying the values into "buckets," where the index for the bucket is given by the position of the digit being sorted. Once all digit positions have been examined, the list must be sorted.
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The sorting algorithm is called Radix Sort. It is ideal if you are using linked lists with integer keys. It sorts elements by looking at their KEY values one digit at a time. First it sorts them according to their least significant digit. It sorts the result of this according to the second least significant digit. And carries on like this until, at last, it has sorted according to the most significant digit.
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One disadvantage of an LSD radix sort is that it does not run in place, which means that the keys or pointers to the keys must be temporarily stored outside of their original memory space during processing. O(n) additional memory space is needed to hold the keys or pointers to the keys. For fixed-length keys, another disadvantage of an LSD radix sort is that it requires one sorting pass over the input list for each digit in a key.
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