Node-TimSort Async: Fast Sorting for Node.js

An adaptive and stable sort algorithm based on merging that requires fewer than nlog(n) comparisons when run on partially sorted arrays. The algorithm uses O(n) memory and still runs in O(nlogn) (worst case) on random arrays. This implementation is based on the original TimSort developed by Tim Peters for Python's lists (code here). TimSort has been also adopted in Java starting from version 7.

Acknowledgments

This is forked from Node TimSort.

Usage

Install the package with npm:

npm install --save timsort

You can also install it with bower:

bower install timsort

You must provide your own async compare function (to sort any object) as:

function numberCompare(a, b) {
    return Promise.resolve(a - b);
}

var arr = [...];
var TimSort = require('timsort');
TimSort.sort(arr, numberCompare);

You can also sort only a specific subrange of the array:

TimSort.sort(arr, numberCompare, 5, 10);

Performance

I removed the benchmarks, since they weren't built with asynchronicity in mind. Benchmarking speed here seems unimportant if you're waiting on user input.

Stability

TimSort is stable which means that equal items maintain their relative order after sorting. Stability is a desirable property for a sorting algorithm. Consider the following array of items with an height and a weight.

[
  { height: 100, weight: 80 },
  { height: 90, weight: 90 },
  { height: 70, weight: 95 },
  { height: 100, weight: 100 },
  { height: 80, weight: 110 },
  { height: 110, weight: 115 },
  { height: 100, weight: 120 },
  { height: 70, weight: 125 },
  { height: 70, weight: 130 },
  { height: 100, weight: 135 },
  { height: 75, weight: 140 },
  { height: 70, weight: 140 }
]

Items are already sorted by weight. Sorting the array according to the item's height with the timsort module results in the following array:

[
  { height: 70, weight: 95 },
  { height: 70, weight: 125 },
  { height: 70, weight: 130 },
  { height: 70, weight: 140 },
  { height: 75, weight: 140 },
  { height: 80, weight: 110 },
  { height: 90, weight: 90 },
  { height: 100, weight: 80 },
  { height: 100, weight: 100 },
  { height: 100, weight: 120 },
  { height: 100, weight: 135 },
  { height: 110, weight: 115 }
]

Items with the same height are still sorted by weight which means they preserved their relative order.

array.sort, instead, is not guarranteed to be stable. In Node v0.12.7 sorting the previous array by height with array.sort results in:

[
  { height: 70, weight: 140 },
  { height: 70, weight: 95 },
  { height: 70, weight: 125 },
  { height: 70, weight: 130 },
  { height: 75, weight: 140 },
  { height: 80, weight: 110 },
  { height: 90, weight: 90 },
  { height: 100, weight: 100 },
  { height: 100, weight: 80 },
  { height: 100, weight: 135 },
  { height: 100, weight: 120 },
  { height: 110, weight: 115 }
]

As you can see the sorting did not preserve weight ordering for items with the same height.