The best generic sorts are O(n log n) (worst case matters), SD was seemingly talking about the command line utility sort , which is generic .

> It is important to understand that hashing is not algorithmically superior to sorting, indeed it is a specific form of sorting in disguise.

I disagree because as I already said counting by hashing is one pass and is loosing any order information.

Sort is about ordering and I don't see a way to make this in one pass.

But I'd be interested to see your evidence about how the information loss from hashing can be compensated ...