Sort Containers with std::sort()

The problem of how to efficiently sort comparable elements is essentially solved. For most applications, there's no reason to re-invent this wheel. The STL provides an excellent sorting solution via the std::sort() algorithm. While the standard does not specify a sorting algorithm, it does specify a worst-case complexity of$O (nlogn)$, when applied to a range of n elements.

Just a few decades ago, the quicksort algorithm was considered a good compromise for most uses and was generally faster than other comparable algorithms. Today we have hybrid ...