L = list(range(half - 1, -1, -1))
L.extend(range(half))
# Force to float, so that the timings are comparable. This is
- # significantly faster if we leave tham as ints.
+ # significantly faster if we leave them as ints.
L = list(map(float, L))
doit(L) # !sort
print()
although this may require some temp memory (more on that later).
When a run is identified, its base address and length are pushed on a stack
-in the MergeState struct. merge_collapse() is then called to see whether it
-should merge it with preceding run(s). We would like to delay merging as
-long as possible in order to exploit patterns that may come up later, but we
-like even more to do merging as soon as possible to exploit that the run just
-found is still high in the memory hierarchy. We also can't delay merging
-"too long" because it consumes memory to remember the runs that are still
-unmerged, and the stack has a fixed size.
+in the MergeState struct. merge_collapse() is then called to potentially
+merge runs on that stack. We would like to delay merging as long as possible
+in order to exploit patterns that may come up later, but we like even more to
+do merging as soon as possible to exploit that the run just found is still
+high in the memory hierarchy. We also can't delay merging "too long" because
+it consumes memory to remember the runs that are still unmerged, and the
+stack has a fixed size.
What turned out to be a good compromise maintains two invariants on the
stack entries, where A, B and C are the lengths of the three righmost not-yet
inclusive = 2**(k-1) through (2**k-1)-1 inclusive, which has
(2**k-1)-1 - 2**(k-1) + 1 =
2**k-1 - 2**(k-1) =
- 2*2**k-1 - 2**(k-1) =
+ 2*2**(k-1)-1 - 2**(k-1) =
(2-1)*2**(k-1) - 1 =
2**(k-1) - 1
elements.