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A Pointless Derivation of Radixsort

Jeremy Gibbons

Abstract

This paper is about point-free (or `pointless') calculations — calculations performed at the level of function composition instead of that of function application. We address this topic with the help of an example, namely calculating the radix-sort algorithm from a more obvious specification of sorting. The message that we hope to send is that point-free calculations are sometimes surprisingly simpler than the corresponding point-wise calculations.

Journal
Journal of Functional Programming
Number
3
Pages
339–346
Volume
9
Year
1999