Thanks to Knuth SKA's Merging Stage 1 is 90% faster

[scotspine]

apologies fungus - too much clarity from bordeaux methinks. but you're clearly not a field theorist. quite right too. waste of time.

[OrangeHopper]

The poise of the macro 11 olive and elegance of the 68000 mayfly unfortunately swamped by the rowdy rumbustiousness of the 8086 sedge.

[Fungus]

Looks like whoever did that was incompetent, since you know internal detail so well I presume you were involved?

You would have liked working at Psion. They're your kind of people. Heads so far up their arses they can see daylight.

I will report back performance improvement that I have achieved by rewriting selected functions in high-performance x86 assembly

The excitement is unbearable ... Do please keep us posted of every exciting step.

[Fungus]

apologies fungus - too much clarity from bordeaux methinks. but you're clearly not a field theorist. quite right too. waste of time.

I like thinking about picking mushrooms. Does that count as field theory?

[AtW]

You would have liked working at Psion. They're your kind of people.

Indeed - they are my kind of people, pioneers who may have ultimately failed but they played their role and will always be remembered as pioneers.

And what you have achieved today?

[Fungus]

Indeed - they are my kind of people, pioneers who may have ultimately failed but they played their role and will always be remembered as pioneers.

And what you have achieved today?

Those who met them will remember them as anuses.

Did you mean to say "And what have you achieved today". Well, how kind of you to ask. I had a short work break followed by a nice lunch of baked potato, beans and bolied veg, followed by another work break and then this evening a nice Chinese takeaway. All in all very successful.

[Jabberwocky]

AtW - the Art of Computer Programming is more than one book - you have been looking at vol 3. And only a mad Russian would code these things given the large number of libraries that already do this for you.

[AtW]

I have all 3 volumes, most relevant for me was indeed Vol 3.

When you use somebody else's library (if you have this option in the first place), you just get things done but you do not gain understanding.

Now that I have understood and programmed some concepts I see how I can apply them in practice elsewhere and improve performance greatly.

[scotspine]

I like thinking about picking mushrooms. Does that count as field theory?

that'll do nicely fungus. welcome to the illustrious guild of field theorists. oh will give you your welcome pack.

[Jabberwocky]

If you don't understand sorting then you have not been properly trained AtW. Implementation of a sorting algorithm is a highly skilled job - just a small error in logic can destroy an O(n log n) algorithm. That is why it is best to leave to people who have spent considerable time implementing robust algorithms in libraries.

I understand most sorting algorithms: quicksort, mergesort, heapsort, radix sort. Yet I ALWAYS use a library.