minrun swept, Timsort at n = 8,192

minrun swept, Timsort at n = 8,192

minrun is how long a natural run is extended to before it is pushed, and it is one number in a source file. Swept across 4–256 with everything else held, the comparisons vary as drawn. The shipped value is 32 at this n, marked; the measured minimum is at 256 on random and 4 on nearly sorted, costing 0.5% and 27.1% more than the best available. A threshold chosen against one counter is not chosen against the others, and this figure only shows one of them.

Drawn at 700 × 430, wide on the page. Everything above is what threshold-sweep returns with no arguments; the caption is the generator's own, computed from the numbers in the drawing rather than written beside it.

1 essay calls threshold-sweep. The drawing above is what it returns with no arguments at all; every call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the one its essay argues about — which is what optcheck and figfill exist to catch.