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> which a sort should never be

There's certainly a most awesome sort algorithm which is exponential...

https://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/bogobogosort.html

They are not even sure what the complexity is but it's like O(n!^(n-k)) or O(n*(n!)^n).

I'm aware of bogosort and its crazy variants, but let's not be ridiculous here. You could make any "sorting" algorithm arbitrarily bad if you'd like by doing such silly but useless things.

I propose Boltzmann sort: wait around until the heat death of the universe, and a Boltzmann brain will emerge from the cosmos, and sort your values while contemplating infinity.

Ah, a fully general O(1) algorithm. Amazing.

The very idea of O(n*(n!)^n) is going to give me nightmares.

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