🚀 go-pugleaf

A radix sort has a time complexity of O(N), which means that it
operates in linear time on N units of data.  It is asymptotically
faster than a Quick Sort which operates in O(N*log(N)) time.  This
means that the more data you sort, the faster a radix sort will be
over a Quick Sort, as long as you have enough memory to continue the
radix sorting.  The time difference between the Quick Sort and a
radix sort is the log(N) factor times some other constant factor.

How does this relate to your problem?  If you have several or many
objects such as bitmaps or windows that you are displaying on a
screen, you can represent their distance from the front of the
screen or the observer as an integer.  This integer may then be
represented as the path in a binary tree, with the higher order
bits represented as paths near the root and the lower order bits as
paths near the leaves.  The existence of a path in the binary radix
tree indicates the existence of a particular integer.  Recursively
descending the binary tree and recording the path as you go along
will produce ordered list of integers in either ascending or
descending order depending on the direction in which the descent
begins.

I have written some radix sorting code but am not ready to release
it.  Perhaps you can write some of your own code based on what I
have written above.


-Ed L