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Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 19:40:53 -0800
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To: Xinchen Hui <laruence@php.net>
Cc: =?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?= <tim@bastelstu.be>, 
	PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com>, 
	Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Faster zend sorting implementation
From: aharvey@php.net (Adam Harvey)

On 5 January 2015 at 18:39, Xinchen Hui <laruence@php.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:04 AM, Tim D=C3=BCsterhus <tim@bastelstu.be> wro=
te:
>> On 05.01.2015 18:08, Xinchen Hui wrote:
>>>     do you think such BC break is acceptable? or I still need a RFC? :<
>>>
>>
>> Chiming in as a pure userland developer. The documentation already state=
s:
>>
>>> Note: Like most PHP sorting functions, sort() uses an implementation
>> of =C2=BB Quicksort. The pivot is chosen in the middle of the partition
>> resulting in an optimal time for already sorted arrays. This is however
>> an implementation detail you shouldn't rely on.
> thanks, then I think no problem.
>
> the reason why I asked is I found lots of test scripts starts to fail,
> they all rely on the current non-stable sorting algo :<

We make no promises about the implementation on any of the relevant
documentation pages, besides that it's a quick sort, and we explicitly
say that you can't rely on that. I think we can change this without a
real BC concern (although it would still be worth noting in UPGRADING
and, by extension, the migration guide).

Adam