fastSort, faster is better!

Today, Jackson Dunstan posted about how to use a profiler to get better performance in flash.
For this post he decided to show how to use TheMiner… awesome!
In this post he’s profiling two sorting method: native vector. sort, and Skyboy’s fastSort code.
At first I was impressed by the result of Skyboy. Then I realized two things.
First, The flash native sort REALY don’t like Number.infinity, negative infinity.
So when sorting and vector. with these values inside, it’s getting a LOT slower.
Where a standard vector could take 100ms to sort, one with infinity values in it can take up to 2000ms!!
The other thing is fastSort is using void (*) pointer everywhere.
So if we go back a few day to my previous (epic) article , we know that this is a really bad thing when casting from void to Number.
It’s allocating a LOT of memory. (5Mo/Sort on 50K elements)
So I decided to add a few hundreds lines to this class with already a lot of it (fastSort)
I added a specific sorting method for int, uint and Number to manage only typed values.
The result is quite amazing!
Native Vector Sort : 100 ms + 400Ko allocation
UnOptimized fastSort : 400 ms + 5Mo allocation
New Optimized fastSort : 20ms + zero allocation
Finaly, just before giving you the code, I want to invite you on a new little forum that focus on Performances, optimization, debugging and multiple other flash hardcore subjects.
Many of the most hardcore dev and blogger I know are already in or are going to join soon, so please be part of this and enjoy posting refreshing and brain teasing content!
The Hardcore flash forum
And now.. the way too many lines of code part: [...]

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