sorting
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (3)
- an operation that segregates items into groups according to a specified criterion“the bottleneck in mail delivery is the process of sorting”Synonyms: sortType of operation
- the basic cognitive process of arranging into classes or categoriesSynonyms: classificationcategorizationcategorisationType of basic cognitive processKinds appraisal, coordination, subsumption, attribution, cross-classification
- grouping by class or kind or sizeType of groupingKinds separation, triage
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
“sorting” is listed under Sort.
1. To separate, and place in distinct classes or divisions, as things having different qualities; as, to sort cloths according to their colors; to sort wool or thread according to its fineness.
Rays which differ in refrangibility may be parted and sorted from one another.— Sir Isaac Newton
2. To reduce to order from a confused state. Richard Hooker
3. To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class.
Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects.— Francis, Baron Verulam Bacon
She sorts things present with things past.— Sir John Davies
4. To choose from a number; to select; to cull.
That he may sort out a worthy spouse.— George Chapman
I'll sort some other time to visit you.— William Shakespeare
5. To conform; to adapt; to accommodate. rare
I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience.— William Shakespeare
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
1.<application, algorithm> To arrange a collection of items in some specified order. The items - records in a file or data structures in memory - consist of one or more fields or members. One of these fields is designated as the "sort key" which means the records will be ordered according to the value of that field. Sometimes a sequence of key fields is specified such that if all earlier keys are equal then the later keys will be compared. Within each field some ordering is imposed, e.g. ascending or descending numerical, lexical ordering, or date.
Sorting is the subject of a great deal of study since it is a common operation which can consume a lot of computer time. There are many well-known sorting algorithms with different time and space behaviour and programming complexity.
Examples are quicksort, insertion sort, bubble sort, heap sort, and tree sort. These employ many different data structures to store sorted data, such as arrays, linked lists, and binary trees.
2.<tool> The Unix utility program for sorting lines of files.
Unix manual page: sort(1).
(1997-02-12)