sort array of integers lexicographically C++

Question

I want to sort a large array of integers (say 1 millon elements) lexicographically.

Example:

input [] = { 100, 21 , 22 , 99 , 1  , 927 }
sorted[] = { 1           


        

Answer 1

While some other answers here (Lightness's, notbad's) are already showing quite good code, I believe I can add one solution which might be more performant (since it requires neither division nor power in each loop; but it requires floating point arithmetic, which again might make it slow, and possibly inaccurate for large numbers):

#include 
#include 
#include 

// method taken from http://stackoverflow.com/a/1489873/671366
template 
int numDigits(T number)
{
    int digits = 0;
    if (number < 0) digits = 1; // remove this line if '-' counts as a digit
    while (number) {
        number /= 10;
        digits++;
    }
    return digits;
}

bool lexiSmaller(int i1, int i2)
{
    int digits1 = numDigits(i1);
    int digits2 = numDigits(i2);

    double val1 = i1/pow(10.0, digits1-1);
    double val2 = i2/pow(10.0, digits2-1);

    while (digits1 > 0 && digits2 > 0 && (int)val1 == (int)val2)
    {
        digits1--;
        digits2--;
        val1 = (val1 - (int)val1)*10;
        val2 = (val2 - (int)val2)*10;
    }
    if (digits1 > 0 && digits2 > 0)
    {
        return (int)val1 < (int)val2;
    }
    return (digits2 > 0);
}


int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    // just testing whether the comparison function works as expected:
    assert (lexiSmaller(1, 100));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(100, 1));
    assert (lexiSmaller(100, 22));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(22, 100));
    assert (lexiSmaller(927, 99));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(99, 927));
    assert (lexiSmaller(1, 927));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(927, 1));
    assert (lexiSmaller(21, 22));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(22, 21));
    assert (lexiSmaller(22, 99));
    assert (!lexiSmaller(99, 22));

    // use the comparison function for the actual sorting:
    int input[] = { 100 , 21 , 22 , 99 , 1 ,927 };
    std::sort(&input[0], &input[5], lexiSmaller);
    std::cout << "sorted: ";
    for (int i=0; i<6; ++i)
    {
        std::cout << input[i];
        if (i<5)
        {
            std::cout << ", ";
        }
    }
    std::cout << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Though I have to admit I haven't tested the performance yet.