Python Program for Counting Sort

Counting sort is a sorting technique based on keys between a specific range. It works by counting the number of objects having distinct key values (kind of hashing). Then doing some arithmetic to calculate the position of each object in the output sequence.

# Python program for counting sort 
  
# The main function that sort the given string arr[] in  
# alphabetical order 
def countSort(arr): 
  
    # The output character array that will have sorted arr 
    output = [0 for i in range(256)] 
  
    # Create a count array to store count of inidividul 
    # characters and initialize count array as 0 
    count = [0 for i in range(256)] 
  
    # For storing the resulting answer since the  
    # string is immutable 
    ans = ["" for _ in arr] 
  
    # Store count of each character 
    for i in arr: 
        count[ord(i)] += 1
  
    # Change count[i] so that count[i] now contains actual 
    # position of this character in output array 
    for i in range(256): 
        count[i] += count[i-1] 
  
    # Build the output character array 
    for i in range(len(arr)): 
        output[count[ord(arr[i])]-1] = arr[i] 
        count[ord(arr[i])] -= 1
  
    # Copy the output array to arr, so that arr now 
    # contains sorted characters 
    for i in range(len(arr)): 
        ans[i] = output[i] 
    return ans  
  
# Driver program to test above function 
arr = "geeksforgeeks"
ans = countSort(arr) 
print "Sorted character array is %s"  %("".join(ans)) 
  
# This code is contributed by Nikhil Kumar Singh 

Output:

Sorted character array is eeeefggkkorss

Please refer complete article on Counting Sort for more details!

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