Weak-heap sort

A data structure called aweak-heap is defined by relaxing the requirements for a heap. The structure can be implemented on a 1-dimensional array with one extra bit per data item and can be initialized withn items using exactlyn–1 data element compares. Theoretical analysis and empirical results indicate that it is a competitive structure for sorting. The worst case number of data element comparisons is strictly less than (n–1) logn+0.086013n and the expected number is conjectured to be approximately (n–0.5)logn–0.413n.