Sorting with Powerful Primitive Operations

The cost of a sorting algorithm is the number of primitive operations used in a worst-case execution of the algorithm. In the standard model, the primitive operation is a binary comparison, which sorts a pair of keys. Cost measures based on other primitive operations are considered. A general lower bound for the cost of a sorting algorithm is given, which is valid for a wide class of possible primitives. For several special primitive operations, sorting algorithms are given. The primitive operations studied are: sorting \(k\) keys, finding the largest among \(k\) keys, and merging lists of lengths \(i,j\).