Radix Sort Base 16 (Hexadecimals)

Question

I have spent more 10hr+ on trying to sort the following(hexadecimals) in LSD radix sort, but no avail. There is very little material on this subject on web.

Answer 1

I see your points. I think negative numbers are easy to sort after the list has been sorted with something like loop, flag, and swap. wb unsigned float points? – itproxti Nov 1 '16 at 16:02

As for handling floating points there might be a way, for example 345.768 is the number, it needs to be converted to an integer, i.e. make it 345768, I multiplied 1000 with it. Just like the offset moves the -ve numbers to +ve domain, so will multiplying by 1000, 10000 etc will turn the floats to numbers with their decimal part as all zeros. Then they can be typecasted to int or long. However with large values, the whole reformed number may not be accomodated within the entire int or long range.

The number that is to be multiplied has to be constant, just like the offset so that the relationship among the magnitudes is preserved. Its better to use powers of 2 such as 8 or 16, as then bitshifting operator can be used. However just like the calculation of offset takes some time, so will calculation of the multiplier will take some time. The whole array is to be searched to calculate the least number that when multiplied will turn all the numbers with zeros in decimal parts.

This may not compute fast but still can do the job if required.