Question

Suppose I have a list of things (numbers, to keep things simple here) and I have a function I want to use to sort them by, using SortBy.
For example, the following sorts a list of numbers by last digit:

SortBy[{301, 201}, Mod[#,10]&]

And notice how two of (ie, all of) those numbers have the same last digit.
So it doesn’t matter which order we return them in.
In this case Mathematica returns them in the opposite order.
How can I ensure that all ties are broken in favor of how the items were ordered in the original list?

(I know it’s kind of trivial but I feel like this comes up from time to time so I thought it would be handy to get it on StackOverflow. I’ll post whatever I come up with as an answer if no one beats me to it.)

Attempts at making this more searchable: sort with minimal disturbance, sort with least number of swaps, custom tie-breaking, sorting with costly swapping, stable sorting.

PS: Thanks to Nicholas for pointing out that this is called stable sorting. It was on the tip of my tongue! Here’s another link: Link

Answer 1

After asking around, I was given a satisfying explanation:

Short answer: You want SortBy[list, {f}] to get a stable sort.

Long answer:

SortBy[list, f] sorts list in the order determined by applying f to each element of list, breaking ties using the canonical ordering explained under Sort. (This is the second documented “More Information” note in the documentation for SortBy.)

SortBy[list, {f, g}] breaks ties using the order determined by applying g to each element.

Note that SortBy[list, f] is the same as SortBy[list, {f, Identity}].

SortBy[list, {f}] does no tie breaking (and gives a stable sort), which is what you want:

In[13]:= SortBy[{19, 301, 201, 502, 501, 101, 300}, {Mod[#, 10] &}]

Out[13]= {300, 301, 201, 501, 101, 502, 19}

Finally, sakra’s solution SortBy[list, {f, tie++ &}] is effectively equivalent to SortBy[list, {f}].