Array.prototype.sort is not quite stable

• Component: JavaScriptCore
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Richard Gibson]

The results of sorting length-N arrays for sufficiently large N appear to differ from a stable sort only at indices 0, 1, and N/2. It would be very convenient for Sizzle and jQuery if the sort were made fully stable, *especially* if such change lands in 537.32 so there's no release in which #108274 is fixed but this is not.

Example with strings: http://jsfiddle.net/zTprj/1/
Example with DOM nodes: http://jsfiddle.net/vU2uB/
jQuery tickets: http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/13505 http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/13331

[Kyle Simpson]

For reference, discussion thread for Chrome about this: http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=90

In particular, some people on the thread balk at stabilizing the sort because the spec for JS doesn't mandate stable sort (apparently wanting to give implementers more flexibility for performance sake).

[Richard Gibson]

Argh, forgive me for the misplaced report. WebKit handles this just fine; V8 is the inconsistent engine here. Moving discussion to their tracker.