Well, when you timed the code, ou used std::clock. Howver, I have found that on windows, using std::time is much more accurate than clock and gives more reliable results. Also, I acknowledge that radixsort and radixquicksort might be slower than std::sort in some cass, but they are generally easier for the user to implement. Also, have you downloaded the multikey quicksort code yet? it is like radix quicksort but can be used for arrays of arrays of any type, so writing complicated and slower comparison functions are not needed for the sort to be used. For example, if you wanted to sort arrays of arrays of integers, especially if many of them are in a small range, then to write an operator<, you would have to include a for loop to compare the elements. However, multikey quicksort dows not need any complicated comparison function, so it will work really well.