''' Python implementation of the fastest merge sort algorithm. Takes an average of 0.6 microseconds to sort a list of length 1000 items. Best Case Scenario : O(n) Worst Case Scenario : O(n^2) because native python functions:min, max and remove are already O(n) ''' from __future__ import print_function def merge_sort(collection): """Pure implementation of the fastest merge sort algorithm in Python :param collection: some mutable ordered collection with heterogeneous comparable items inside :return: a collection ordered by ascending Examples: >>> merge_sort([0, 5, 3, 2, 2]) [0, 2, 2, 3, 5] >>> merge_sort([]) [] >>> merge_sort([-2, -5, -45]) [-45, -5, -2] """ start, end = [], [] while len(collection) > 1: min_one, max_one = min(collection), max(collection) start.append(min_one) end.append(max_one) collection.remove(min_one) collection.remove(max_one) end.reverse() return start + collection + end if __name__ == '__main__': try: raw_input # Python 2 except NameError: raw_input = input # Python 3 user_input = raw_input('Enter numbers separated by a comma:\n').strip() unsorted = [int(item) for item in user_input.split(',')] print(*merge_sort(unsorted), sep=',')