Classical function call recursion wastes a lot of stack space.
Each recursion level requires a full stack frame comprising all
local variables and additional space as dictated by the
processor calling convention.
This implementation instead stores the variables that are unique
for each recursion level in a parameter stack array, and uses
iteration to emulate recursion. Function call recursion is not
used until the array is full.
To ensure the stack consumption isn't worsened by this design, the
size of the parameter stack array is chosen to be similar to the
stack frame excluding the array. Each function call recursion level
can handle 8 iterative recursion levels.
Stack consumption will worsen when sorting tiny arrays that do not
need recursion (of 6 elements or less). It will be about equal for
up to 15 elements, and be an improvement for larger arrays. The best
case improvement is a stack size reduction down to about one quarter
of the stack consumption before the change.
A design where the parameter stack array is large enough for the
worst case recursion level was rejected because it would worsen
the stack consumption when sorting arrays smaller than about 1500
elements. The worst case is 31 levels on a 32-bit system.
A design with a dynamic parameter array size was rejected because
of limitations in some compilers.
The qsort algorithm splits the input array in three parts. The
left and right parts may need further sorting. One of them is
sorted by recursion, the other by iteration. This update ensures
that it is the smaller part that is chosen for recursion.
By choosing the smaller part, each recursion level will handle
less than half the array of the previous recursion level. Hence
the recursion depth is bounded to be less than log2(n) i.e. 1
level per significant bit in the array size n.
The update also includes code comments explaining the algorithm.
libc/search/objectlist.awk.in.
* libc/Makefile.am (SUBDIRS): Add search.
(SUBLIBS): Add search/libsearch.la.
* libc/configure.in (AC_OUTPUT): Add search/Makefile.
* libc/search: New directory.
* libc/search/Makefile.am: New file.
* libc/search/extern.h: New file.
* libc/search/hash.c: New file.
* libc/search/hash.h: New file.
* libc/search/hash_bigkey.c: New file.
* libc/search/hash_buf.c: New file.
* libc/search/hash_func.c: New file.
* libc/search/hash_log2.c: New file.
* libc/search/hash_page.c: New file.
* libc/search/hcreate.3: New file.
* libc/search/hcreate.c: New file.
* libc/search/hcreate.c~: New file.
* libc/search/hcreate_r.c: New file.
* libc/search/ndbm.c: New file.
* libc/search/page.h: New file.
* libc/search/tdelete.c: New file.
* libc/search/tdestroy.c: New file.
* libc/search/tfind.c: New file.
* libc/search/tsearch.3: New file.
* libc/search/tsearch.c: New file.
* libc/search/twalk.c: New file.
* libc/include/db.h: New file.
* libc/include/ndbm.h: New file.
* libc/include/search.h: New file.
* libc/include/sys/queue.h: New file.
* libc/include/sys/cdefs.h: New file.
* libc/include/sys/param.h
[__IEEE_LITTLE_ENDIAN,__IEEE_BIG_ENDIAN]: Set BYTE_ORDER to
LITTLE_ENDIAN or BIG_ENDIAN.
* libc/include/sys/errno.h (EFTYPE): New macro.
* libc/search/bsearch.c: Move from libc/stdlib.
* libc/search/qsort.c: Likewise.
* libc/stdlib/Makefile.am (LIB_SOURCES): Remove bsearch.c and
qsort.c.
(CHEWOUT_FILES): Remove bsearch.def and qsort.def.
* libc/stdlib/stdlib.tex: Remove references to bsearch and qsort.
Hakan Lindqvist
Yaakov Selkowitz
Thomas Fitzsimmons