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DeltaSort: Incremental Sorting of Arrays with Known Updates

Author Shubham Dwivedi

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LIPIcs.SEA.2026.18.pdf
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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Sorting and searching
  • Theory of computation → Data structures design and analysis
Keywords
  • Incremental sorting
  • Sorting algorithms
  • Array maintenance

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Abstract

When records need to be read in a particular order, sorting at query time incurs repeated Θ(n log n) cost for an array of n records and can become a bottleneck in read-heavy workloads. A common solution is to maintain a derived sorted read-replica that is kept updated as the underlying system-of-record changes. For updating read-replicas that are stored as arrays, existing approaches rely on either full re-sorting or incremental algorithms such as binary insertion or merge-based sort. In this paper, we study incremental sorting under a new model in which the sorting routine is explicitly informed of the k indices updated since the previous sort - a setting that naturally arises in systems that track updates. Under this model, we present DeltaSort, a new algorithm that runs in O(n√k) expected time using O(k) auxiliary space under a random update model, and outperforms existing algorithms for small update batches in our experimental evaluation.

Cite As Get BibTex

Shubham Dwivedi. DeltaSort: Incremental Sorting of Arrays with Known Updates. In 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 371, pp. 18:1-18:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.18

Author Details

Shubham Dwivedi
  • Independent Researcher, Kanpur, India

Supplementary Materials

References

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