What is the point of do_smallsort in sort.mojo

Mojo Standard Library
1

Builtin sort module has this entry-point:

def sort[
    T: Copyable,
    origin: MutOrigin,
    //,
    *,
    stable: Bool = False,
](span: Span[T, origin], cmp_fn: Some[def(T, T) -> Bool]):
    """Sort a span in-place.
    The function doesn't return anything, the span is updated in-place.

    Parameters:
        T: Type of the underlying data.
        origin: Origin of span.
        stable: Whether the sort should be stable.

    Args:
        span: The span to be sorted.
        cmp_fn: The comparison function.
    """

    _sort[stable=stable](span, cmp_fn)

Which gives no option to set do_smallsort parameter and it is set to False by default.

Quick Sort function is also called this way: _quicksort[do_smallsort=do_smallsort](span, cmp_fn). It is impossible for small sort to be delegated in current design.

2

Looking at the history, it looks like this was added as an optimization for numeric values. At some point the overloads for Span[SIMD] which set do_smallsort=True were removed, leaving this code unused, which was probably an oversight.

I opened a ticket for the standard library team to take a look at it. Thanks for letting us know!