[RyanZAG]

Nobody mentioned quicksort. You're assuming quicksort, which is what the issue is. Many languages don't actually use quicksort, fyi. The practical performance considerations of just quicksort itself also change depending on how you've implemented the small details - are you moving memory around, or just changing pointers? Huge difference in the real world, no difference in the algorithm.

[mypalmike]

I oversimplified my response and it lost the point I was making. You are certainly correct that many languages don't use quicksort. My bad.

I was responding to a comment that I felt was needlessly dismissive. The default sort algorithm of any major language's standard library is usually not worth trying to beat, and calling someone "incompetent" for not reinventing the wheel each time they encounter data that needs to be sorted is absurd. Note: I said "usually", not "never". A competent programmer doesn't fix problems that don't exist, and you would absolutely have to profile code before convincing me that the choice of sorting algorithm was the source of a performance problem.

As far as the details go... In only a few languages (e.g. C) might you really even consider moving memory around rather than pointers. The semantics of standard library sort in Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Javascript... is sorting an array of primitives by value or objects by reference.