For completeness, below is an MMBasic version of a Shell sort - it is about four to five times faster than a bubble sort but does have a serious caveat in that it can fail if the data is in an unfortunate order - this is just a fact of life for Shell sort. That said, it is very unlikely to happen but be warned.
Before choosing a sort algorithm, read
this article.
Example:
Option Base 0
Dim xx As Integer
xx=my_arraysize 'lack of UBOUND() means we have to manually track the array size
Dim SP$(xx)
ShellSort xx
:
SUB ShellSort(SPTop)
LOCAL INTEGER i,j
LOCAL FLOAT k
LOCAL STRING a$
k = INT(SPTop / 2)
WHILE k > 0
FOR i = 1 to SPTop
j = i
a$ = SP$(i)
WHILE (j >= k+1 AND SP$(ABS(j-k)) > a$)
SP$(j) = SP$(j-k)
j = j - k
WEND
sp$(j) = a$
NEXT
IF k = 2 THEN
k = 1
ELSE
k = INT(k * 0.454545) ' 5/11 sort balancing value
END IF
WEND
END SUB