Is there a good radixsort-implementation for floats in C#

Question

I have a datastructure with a field of the float-type. A collection of these structures needs to be sorted by the value of the float. Is there a radix-sort implementation for this.

If there isn't, is there a fast way to access the exponent, the sign and the mantissa. Because if you sort the floats first on mantissa, exponent, and on exponent the last time. You sort floats in O(n).

Answer 1

There's a nice explanation of how to perform radix sort on floats here: http://www.codercorner.com/RadixSortRevisited.htm

If all your values are positive, you can get away with using the binary representation; the link explains how to handle negative values.

Answer 2

By doing some fancy casting and swapping arrays instead of copying this version is 2x faster for 10M numbers as Philip Daubmeiers original with grouplength set to 8. It is 3x faster as Array.Sort for that arraysize.

 static public void RadixSortFloat(this float[] array, int arrayLen = -1)
        {
            // Some use cases have an array that is longer as the filled part which we want to sort
            if (arrayLen < 0) arrayLen = array.Length;
            // Cast our original array as long
            Span<float> asFloat = array;
            Span<int> a = MemoryMarshal.Cast<float, int>(asFloat);
            // Create a temp array
            Span<int> t = new Span<int>(new int[arrayLen]);

            // set the group length to 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 and see which one is quicker
            int groupLength = 8;
            int bitLength = 32;

            // counting and prefix arrays
            // (dimension is 2^r, the number of possible values of a r-bit number) 
            var dim = 1 << groupLength;
            int groups = bitLength / groupLength;
            if (groups % 2 != 0) throw new Exception("groups must be even so data is in original array at end");
            var count = new int[dim];
            var pref = new int[dim];
            int mask = (dim) - 1;
            int negatives = 0, positives = 0;

            // counting elements of the 1st group incuding negative/positive
            for (int i = 0; i < arrayLen; i++)
            {
                if (a[i] < 0) negatives++;
                count[(a[i] >> 0) & mask]++;
            }
            positives = arrayLen - negatives;

            int c;
            int shift;
            for (c = 0, shift = 0; c < groups - 1; c++, shift += groupLength)
            {
                CalcPrefixes();
                var nextShift = shift + groupLength;
                //
                for (var i = 0; i < arrayLen; i++)
                {
                    var ai = a[i];
                    // Get the right index to sort the number in
                    int index = pref[( ai >> shift) & mask]++;
                    count[( ai>> nextShift) & mask]++;
                    t[index] =  ai;
                }

                // swap the arrays and start again until the last group 
                var temp = a;
                a = t;
                t = temp;
            }

            // Last round
            CalcPrefixes();
            for (var i = 0; i < arrayLen; i++)
            {
                var ai = a[i];
                // Get the right index to sort the number in
                int index = pref[( ai >> shift) & mask]++;
                // We're in the last (most significant) group, if the
                // number is negative, order them inversely in front
                // of the array, pushing positive ones back.
                if ( ai < 0) index = positives - (index - negatives) - 1; else index += negatives;
                //
                t[index] =  ai;
            }

            void CalcPrefixes()
            {
                pref[0] = 0;
                for (int i = 1; i < dim; i++)
                {
                    pref[i] = pref[i - 1] + count[i - 1];
                    count[i - 1] = 0;
                }
            }
        }