A radix sorting algorithm was originally used to sort punched cards in several passes.
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In contrast, other radix sorting algorithms must, in the worst case, re-sort the entire list of keys each time that a new key is added or deleted from an existing list, requiring O ( " kn " ) time.
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Because of the application to radix sorting, it is important for counting sort to be a stable sort : if two items have the same key as each other, they should have the same relative position in the output as they did in the input.