timsort is a Go implementation of Tim Peters's mergesort sorting algorithm.

For many input types it is 2-3 times faster than Go's built-in sorting.

The main drawback of this sort method is that it is not in-place (as any mergesort), and may put extra strain on garbage collector.

This implementation was derived from Java's TimSort object by Josh Bloch, which, in turn, was based on the original code by Tim Peters

1. git clone git://github.com/pgmmpk/timsort.git to checkout the source
2. cd timsort
3. make builds all
4. make install installs package

Alternatively, you can install using goinstall github.com/pgmmpk/timsort, but if you do this, the import statement in your programs should be import github.com/pgmmpk/timsort instead of just import timsort.

In source directory, say

make test

to run test harness

In source directory, say

make bench

to run benchmarks. Each combination of input type/size is presented to timsort, and, for comparison, to the standard Go sort (sort.Sort). See BENCHMARKS.md for more info and some benchmarking results.

package main

import (
    // depending on how timsort was installed, use the appropriate import target
    //	"github.com/pgmmpk/timsort"
	"timsort"
	"fmt"
)

type Record struct {
	ssn int
	name string
}

func BySsn(a, b interface{}) bool {
	return a.(Record).ssn < b.(Record).ssn
}

func ByName(a, b interface{}) bool {
	return a.(Record).name < b.(Record).name
}

func main() {
	db := make([]interface{}, 3)
	db[0] = Record{123456789, "joe"}
	db[1] = Record{101765430, "sue"}
	db[2] = Record{345623452, "mary"}

	// sorts array by ssn (ascending)
	timsort.Sort(db, BySsn)
	fmt.Printf("sorted by ssn: %v\n", db)

	// now re-sort same array by name (ascending)
	timsort.Sort(db, ByName)
	fmt.Printf("sorted by name: %v\n", db)
}