Sorteeri

Sorteeri is an Estonian verb meaning to arrange or classify items according to a specified criterion, such as alphabetically or numerically. The imperative form "sorteeri" is used to instruct someone to perform the action. The related noun forms include sorteering (sorting) and sorteeri jaotis or sorteerija (a sorter or sorting device).

In computing and data handling, sorting is a fundamental operation that reorganizes a collection of items according to a key or comparison rule. Sorting can be performed in ascending or descending order and may use one or multiple keys. The concept of stability matters: a stable sort preserves the relative order of items with equal keys, while an unstable sort may not.

Common sorting algorithms include quicksort, mergesort, heapsort, insertion sort, and for small or simple datasets, bubble sort. Average time complexity for efficient general-purpose sorts is often O(n log n), though some algorithms can degrade to O(n^2) in the worst case. Stable variants exist for several algorithms, such as mergesort, and variations of quicksort or heapsort can be made stable as well.

Applications of sorting span many domains. Databases use sorting in queries (ORDER BY), spreadsheets organize rows by column values, and programming languages expose built-in functions to sort collections. Sorting improves data presentation, search efficiency, and deduplication, and is frequently a preparatory step for further processing or analysis.