Radix sort how does it work

Imagine you have numbers some of which having more than one digits like. Then you would start by separating the numbers by units and then putting them together again; next you would separate the numbers by tens and then put them together again; then by hundreds and so on until all the numbers are sorted.

Each time you loop, just read the list from left to right. You can also imagine you are separating the numbers into buckets. Here is an illustration using 5, , 55, 21, , 31, 20, To put them back together, first read the zeroes bucket, then the ones bucket, then so on, until you read the nines bucket.

You are now done. I saw a nice code for this on Geekviewpoint both in Java and in python. For 1st pass: we sort the array on basis of least significant digit 1s place using counting sort. Notice that is below , because occurred below in the original list. For 2nd pass: we sort the array on basis of next digit 10s place using counting sort. Notice that here is below , because occurred below in the previous list, and similarly for , and , For 3rd pass: we sort the array on basis of most significant digit s place using counting sort.

For more details you can refer to this blog on codingeek and have clear understanding. Think of a deck of cards. You first sort it by suit in four piles. Then you put those four piles on top of one another and now sort into 13 piles based on rank. Put those together and you now have a sorted deck. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How does Radix Sort work?

Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 9 months ago. Radix sort works really well for sorting these physical cards. It was a big deal at the time. Weaknesses: Restricted inputs. Radix sort only works when sorting numbers with a fixed number of digits. It won't work for arbitrarily-large numbers. How It Works Radix sort works by sorting the input numbers one digit at a time. Implementation Here's how we'd code it up. We'll assume that all the inputs are bit integers.

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All rights reserved. About Privacy Terms. It's easy and quick. No "reset password" flow. Previous Next. Step by Step Process The Radix sort algorithm is performed using the following steps Step 1 - Define 10 queues each representing a bucket for each digit from 0 to 9. Step 2 - Consider the least significant digit of each number in the list which is to be sorted. Step 3 - Insert each number into their respective queue based on the least significant digit.