Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages of Radix Sort

Radix Sort is a linear sorting algorithm that sorts elements by processing them digit by digit. It is an efficient sorting algorithm for integers or strings with fixed-size keys. Rather than comparing elements directly, Radix Sort distributes the elements into buckets based on each digit’s value. By repeatedly sorting the elements by their significant digits, from the least significant to the most significant, Radix Sort achieves the final sorted order.

Applications of Radix Sort

• In a typical computer, which is a sequential random-access machine, where the records are keyed by multiple fields radix sort is used. For eg., you want to sort on three keys month, day, and year. You could compare two records on year, then on a tie on month and finally on the date. Alternatively, sorting the data three times using Radix sort first on the date, then on month, and finally on year could be used.
• It was used in card sorting machines with 80 columns, and in each column, the machine could punch a hole only in 12 places. The sorter was then programmed to sort the cards, depending upon which place the card had been punched. This was then used by the operator to collect the cards which had the 1st row punched, followed by the 2nd row, and so on.

Key points about Radix Sort:

• It makes assumptions about the data like the data must be between a range of elements.
• The input array must have elements with the same radix and width.
• Radix sort works on sorting based on an individual digit or letter position.
• We must start sorting from the rightmost position and use a stable algorithm at each position.
• Radix sort is not an in-place algorithm as it uses a temporary count array

Advantages of Radix Sort:

• Radix sort has a linear time complexity, which makes it faster than comparison-based sorting algorithms such as quicksort and merge sort for large data sets.
• It is a stable sorting algorithm, meaning that elements with the same key value maintain their relative order in the sorted output.
• Radix sort is efficient for sorting large numbers of integers or strings.
• It can be easily parallelized.

Disadvantages of Radix Sort:

• Radix sort is not efficient for sorting floating-point numbers or other types of data that cannot be easily mapped to a small number of digits.
• It requires a significant amount of memory to hold the count of the number of times each digit value appears.
• It is not efficient for small data sets or data sets with a small number of unique keys.
• It requires that the data being sorted can be represented in a fixed number of digits, which may not be the case for some types of data.