QuickHeapsort, an efficient mix of classical sorting algorithms

Abstract

We present an efficient and practical algorithm for the internal sorting problem. Our algorithm works in-place and, on the average, has a running-time of O(n log n) in the size n of the input. More specifically, the algorithm performs n log n+2.996n+ o(n) comparisons and n log n+2.645n+ o(n) element moves on the average. An experimental comparison of our proposed algorithm with the most efficient variants of Quicksort and Heapsort is carried out and its results are discussed.