Partially Ordered Sort
An algorithm to sort a collection by a sequence of comparators.
Comparators
A comparator takes two elements a
and b
and returns
`0` - if they are equal
a positive number if `a > b`
a negative number if `a < b`
For example the natural comparator on the integers is
def small_first(a, b):
return a - b
The Python sorted
function takes a comparator function as a keyword input
>>> sorted([1, 5, 2, 4, 3], cmp=small_first)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
We may choose to sort by different criteria. For example we might choose to prefer even numbers
def evens_first(a, b):
return a%2 - b%2
>>> sorted([1, 5, 2, 4, 3], cmp=evens_first)
[4, 2, 5, 1, 3]
Note in the example above that all of even numbers precede all of the odd numbers; evens_first
is satisfied. Also note that there are several possible solutions. In this case there are 12
possible solutions that all satisfy the comparator function. sorted
returns one at random.
posort
To obtain the solution [2, 4, 1, 3, 5]
where numbers are sorted first by evenness and then by magnitude we can use the function posort
.
The posort
function attempts to satisfy a sequence of comparator functions of decreasing precedence.
>>> posort([1, 5, 2, 4, 3], evens_first, small_first)
[2, 4, 1, 3, 5]
The rule for even numbers dominates the rule for small numbers. Any number of comparator functions can be specified.
Equivalent structures
A comparator function completely specifies a partial order.
A comparator function can describe any directed acyclic graph (DAG)
Author
License
New BSD license. See LICENSE.txt
History
This idea was originally developed for the Theano project