readme.txt
Leks van der Voort van der Kleij, Meppel, Netherlands, acgrid@planet.nl
January 13th 2006
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----              Fast sorting functions for Euphoria                       ----

The package fastsort.zip contains a set of fast sorting functions for Euphoria.
From 25% - 45% speed gain can be obtained using the generic sort() function and
even more using the atomic asort() function (restricted to sequence of atoms).

For more details, please read fastsort.txt first.

Inserting the provided file sort.e in the Euphoria\Include directory provides
full compatibility with Euphoria standard and let your programs automatically
use these faster functions, without any editing to your files.

Installation notes:

Unzip the package fastsort.zip in a tempory directory (e.g. C:\temp)

You will find:

readme.txt      -- this file
fastsort.txt    -- further information on these sorting functions
testMySorts.ex  -- ready-to-run adapted ALLSORTS evaluation program
sort.e          -- ready-to-insert file for Euphoria\Include
                   providing the new functions as well as custom_sort()

For evaluating the speed of the new functions on your own system, just run
testMySorts.ex

In order to allow all your programs to benefit from the new functions, you have
to insert the new sort.e in Euphoria\Include:

In your directory Euphoria\Include rename sort.e to org_sort.e (or whatever)
Copy my file sort.e into Euphoria\Include.

Note: I also included the function custom_sort() in my version of sort.e, so my
file sort.e provides full compatibility with the original sort.e

Run your programs which use sort() and they should work as usual.
In programs that need even faster sorting of atom sequences, you can now use
asort() as well, but your program is not anymore full compatible with the
Euphoria standard.

Legal note:
The functions are provided "as is". You can use and distribute them freely.
In case of distribution. please distribute the entire fastsort.zip package.

Disclaimer:
The author can not be held responsible for any damage that might occur using
these functions.


