Gathering detailed insights and metrics for array-timsort
Gathering detailed insights and metrics for array-timsort
Fast JavaScript array sorting by implementing Python's Timsort algorithm
npm install array-timsort
Typescript
Module System
Node Version
NPM Version
JavaScript (100%)
Total Downloads
201,988,005
Last Day
585,006
Last Week
2,721,013
Last Month
11,945,320
Last Year
127,526,833
3 Stars
53 Commits
3 Watching
1 Branches
4 Contributors
Minified
Minified + Gzipped
Latest Version
1.0.3
Package Id
array-timsort@1.0.3
Size
8.95 kB
NPM Version
6.14.8
Node Version
14.12.0
Publised On
01 Oct 2020
Cumulative downloads
Total Downloads
Last day
-6%
585,006
Compared to previous day
Last week
-14.5%
2,721,013
Compared to previous week
Last month
2.2%
11,945,320
Compared to previous month
Last year
153.7%
127,526,833
Compared to previous year
A fork of timsort
with the following differences:
array-timsort
returns an array which records how the index of items have been sorted, while timsort
returns undefined
. See the example below.1const {sort} = require('array-timsort') 2 3const array = [3, 2, 1, 5] 4 5sort(array) // returns [2, 1, 0, 4] 6 7console.log(array) // [1, 2, 3, 5]
An adaptive and stable sort algorithm based on merging that requires fewer than nlog(n) comparisons when run on partially sorted arrays. The algorithm uses O(n) memory and still runs in O(nlogn) (worst case) on random arrays. This implementation is based on the original TimSort developed by Tim Peters for Python's lists (code here). TimSort has been also adopted in Java starting from version 7.
Install the package with npm:
1npm i array-timsort
And use it:
1const {sort} = require('array-timsort') 2 3const arr = [...] 4 5sort(arr)
As array.sort()
by default the array-timsort
module sorts according to
lexicographical order.
You can also provide your own compare function (to sort any object) as:
1function numberCompare (a, b) { 2 return a - b 3} 4 5const arr = [...] 6 7sort(arr, numberCompare)
You can also sort only a specific subrange of the array:
1sort(arr, 5, 10) 2sort(arr, numberCompare, 5, 10)
A benchmark is provided in benchmark/index.js
. It compares the array-timsort
module against
the default array.sort
method in the numerical sorting of different types of integer array
(as described here):
For any of the array types the sorting is repeated several times and for different array sizes, average execution time is then printed. I run the benchmark on Node v6.3.1 (both pre-compiled and compiled from source, results are very similar), obtaining the following values:
Execution Time (ns) | Speedup | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Array Type | Length | TimSort.sort | array.sort | |
Random | 10 | 404 | 1583 | 3.91 |
100 | 7147 | 4442 | 0.62 | |
1000 | 96395 | 59979 | 0.62 | |
10000 | 1341044 | 6098065 | 4.55 | |
Descending | 10 | 180 | 1881 | 10.41 |
100 | 682 | 19210 | 28.14 | |
1000 | 3809 | 185185 | 48.61 | |
10000 | 35878 | 5392428 | 150.30 | |
Ascending | 10 | 173 | 816 | 4.69 |
100 | 578 | 18147 | 31.34 | |
1000 | 2551 | 331993 | 130.12 | |
10000 | 22098 | 5382446 | 243.57 | |
Ascending + 3 Rand Exc | 10 | 232 | 927 | 3.99 |
100 | 1059 | 15792 | 14.90 | |
1000 | 3525 | 300708 | 85.29 | |
10000 | 27455 | 4781370 | 174.15 | |
Ascending + 10 Rand End | 10 | 378 | 1425 | 3.77 |
100 | 1707 | 23346 | 13.67 | |
1000 | 5818 | 334744 | 57.53 | |
10000 | 38034 | 4985473 | 131.08 | |
Equal Elements | 10 | 164 | 766 | 4.68 |
100 | 520 | 3188 | 6.12 | |
1000 | 2340 | 27971 | 11.95 | |
10000 | 17011 | 281672 | 16.56 | |
Many Repetitions | 10 | 396 | 1482 | 3.74 |
100 | 7282 | 25267 | 3.47 | |
1000 | 105528 | 420120 | 3.98 | |
10000 | 1396120 | 5787399 | 4.15 | |
Some Repetitions | 10 | 390 | 1463 | 3.75 |
100 | 6678 | 20082 | 3.01 | |
1000 | 104344 | 374103 | 3.59 | |
10000 | 1333816 | 5474000 | 4.10 |
TimSort.sort
is faster than array.sort
on almost of the tested array types.
In general, the more ordered the array is the better TimSort.sort
performs with respect to array.sort
(up to 243 times faster on already sorted arrays).
And also, in general, the bigger the array the more we benefit from using
the array-timsort
module.
These data strongly depend on Node.js version and the machine on which the benchmark is run. I strongly encourage you to run the benchmark on your own setup with:
npm run benchmark
Please also notice that:
array-timsort
module's good performancearray.sort
in pure javascript
and counting element comparisonsTimSort is stable which means that equal items maintain their relative order after sorting. Stability is a desirable property for a sorting algorithm. Consider the following array of items with an height and a weight.
1[ 2 { height: 100, weight: 80 }, 3 { height: 90, weight: 90 }, 4 { height: 70, weight: 95 }, 5 { height: 100, weight: 100 }, 6 { height: 80, weight: 110 }, 7 { height: 110, weight: 115 }, 8 { height: 100, weight: 120 }, 9 { height: 70, weight: 125 }, 10 { height: 70, weight: 130 }, 11 { height: 100, weight: 135 }, 12 { height: 75, weight: 140 }, 13 { height: 70, weight: 140 } 14]
Items are already sorted by weight
. Sorting the array
according to the item's height
with the array-timsort
module
results in the following array:
1[ 2 { height: 70, weight: 95 }, 3 { height: 70, weight: 125 }, 4 { height: 70, weight: 130 }, 5 { height: 70, weight: 140 }, 6 { height: 75, weight: 140 }, 7 { height: 80, weight: 110 }, 8 { height: 90, weight: 90 }, 9 { height: 100, weight: 80 }, 10 { height: 100, weight: 100 }, 11 { height: 100, weight: 120 }, 12 { height: 100, weight: 135 }, 13 { height: 110, weight: 115 } 14]
Items with the same height
are still sorted by weight
which means they preserved their relative order.
array.sort
, instead, is not guarranteed to be stable. In Node v0.12.7
sorting the previous array by height
with array.sort
results in:
1[ 2 { height: 70, weight: 140 }, 3 { height: 70, weight: 95 }, 4 { height: 70, weight: 125 }, 5 { height: 70, weight: 130 }, 6 { height: 75, weight: 140 }, 7 { height: 80, weight: 110 }, 8 { height: 90, weight: 90 }, 9 { height: 100, weight: 100 }, 10 { height: 100, weight: 80 }, 11 { height: 100, weight: 135 }, 12 { height: 100, weight: 120 }, 13 { height: 110, weight: 115 } 14]
As you can see the sorting did not preserve weight
ordering for items with the
same height
.
No vulnerabilities found.
Reason
no binaries found in the repo
Reason
0 existing vulnerabilities detected
Reason
license file detected
Details
Reason
0 commit(s) and 0 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 0
Reason
Found 0/30 approved changesets -- score normalized to 0
Reason
no SAST tool detected
Details
Reason
no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected
Reason
security policy file not detected
Details
Reason
project is not fuzzed
Details
Reason
branch protection not enabled on development/release branches
Details
Score
Last Scanned on 2025-01-27
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