ArrayList.Sort should be a stable sort with an IComparer but is not?

Posted by Kaleb Pederson on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Kaleb Pederson
Published on 2011-02-18T23:13:59Z Indexed on 2011/02/18 23:25 UTC
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A stable sort is a sort that maintains the relative ordering of elements with the same value.

The docs on ArrayList.Sort say that when an IComparer is provided the sort is stable:

If comparer is set to null, this method performs a comparison sort (also called an unstable sort); that is, if two elements are equal, their order might not be preserved. In contrast, a stable sort preserves the order of elements that are equal. To perform a stable sort, you must implement a custom IComparer interface.

Unless I'm missing something, the following testcase shows that ArrayList.Sort is not using a stable sort:

internal class DisplayOrdered {
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public int DisplayOrder { get; set; }
    public override string ToString() {
        return string.Format("ID: {0}, DisplayOrder: {1}", ID, DisplayOrder);
    }
}

internal class DisplayOrderedComparer : IComparer {
    public int Compare(object x, object y) {
        return ((DisplayOrdered)x).DisplayOrder - ((DisplayOrdered)y).DisplayOrder;
    }
}

[TestFixture]
public class ArrayListStableSortTest {

    [Test]
    public void TestWeblinkCallArrayListIsSortedUsingStableSort() {
        var call1 = new DisplayOrdered {ID = 1, DisplayOrder = 0};
        var call2 = new DisplayOrdered {ID = 2, DisplayOrder = 0};
        var call3 = new DisplayOrdered {ID = 3, DisplayOrder = 2};
        var list = new ArrayList {call1, call2, call3};

        list.Sort(new DisplayOrderedComparer());

        // expected order (by ID): 1, 2, 3 (because the DisplayOrder
        // is equal for ID's 1 and 2, their ordering should be
        // maintained for a stable sort.)
        Assert.AreEqual(call1, list[0]); // Actual: ID=2 ** FAILS 
        Assert.AreEqual(call2, list[1]); // Actual: ID=1
        Assert.AreEqual(call3, list[2]); // Actual: ID=3
    }
}

Am I missing something? If not, would this be a documentation bug or a library bug?

Apparently using an OrderBy in Linq gives a stable sort.

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