CSharp-nth_element

CSharp (C#) versions of std::nth_element (or almost)

Status

Introduction to this project

Since C# doesn't have build-in replacement for std::nth_element, I created few versions from existing implementations. WARNING All error handling code has been stripped away, so YMMV

Introduction to std::nth_element

std::nth_element does two things if you use it to array with index K:

item in index K is same as it would be if array was sorted
Items before index K are <= or >= and items after K are >= or <= based on your sorting method

e.g. we have input array of ints (5 4 8 9 1 6 3 2 7) and we want to find out the 4th smallest number from that array. With std::nth_element using 4 as K, the output array would be (2 1 3 4 9 6 8 5 7). Fourth element is 4, and elements before it are smaller than 4, elements after it are larger than 4.

Since there are multiple ways to implement std::nth_element, the outputs can vary. e.g. for our earlier example (5 4 8 9 1 6 3 2 7) with K as 4, another valid output would be (1 2 3 4 9 7 8 5 6). Output can also be fully sorted (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9), but that is NEVER guaranteed for non trival sized arrays.

There two main uses for std::nth_element:

Find nth largest/smallest item from array (useful if you need e.g. find the median value from array)
Give helping hand to sorting algorithms by splitting their work

Differences between C++ and C# versions

C++ version uses iterators. C# versions presented in here use zero based indexes (e.g. [0] means first item in array).

Implementations

First version (nthelement-PD.cs) comes from Adam Horvath. His blog has an Java example which uses Quick select algorithm.

Second one (nthelement-GPLv2.cs) follows the C source code given in CDO project.

Examples

You have following C++ line of code

std::nth_element(myvector.begin(), myvector.begin() + 4, myvector.end());

you would replace it with

PartialSort.nth_element(array: myArray, startIndex: 0, nthSmallest: 4, endIndex: myArray.Length - 1);

If you want to use custom comparer (like descending order), follow this example

PartialSort.nth_element(array: arr, startIndex: 0, nthToSeek: 10, endIndex: arr.Length - 1, (i1, i2) => i2.CompareTo(i1));

Benchmarks

You can run benchmarks (which compares both implementations) by moving to benchmarks folder and running following command

dotnet run -c Release

there are three different input sizes (16 bytes, 64 bytes and 1024 bytes)

Licenses

This text file (README.md) is licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0 1.0 Universal), see LICENSE file

nthelement-PD.cs is released into the public domain. See PUBLICDOMAIN file

nthelement-GPLv2.cs is licensed under GPLv2, see COPYING file