Fastest way to sort a large number of arrays in python

Question

I am trying to sort a large number of arrays in python. I need to perform the sorting for over 11 million arrays at once.

Also, it would be nice if I could directly get

Answer 1

The reason python is so much slower than R is that by python does not typecast variables (i.e. int, string, float), so part of each comparison to determine which value is larger is spent determining the variable type.

You can't fix this problem using python alone, but you can include type definitions using cython (ctypes and psyco also can perform the same function, but I prefer cython). An simple example of how this works is on http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html

Cython compiles a .c version of your python file, that can be imported instead of the .py to reduce the runtime. All the possible ways to compile using cython are shown on http://docs.cython.org/src/reference/compilation.html