A sequence like [b, c, e, d, f, g, ba] would be sorted as [b, ba, c, d, e, f, g]. If lexicographic ordering is used to sort variable-length integers in base 10, then numbers from 1 to 10 would be output as [1, 10, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], as if the shorter keys were left-justified and padded on the right with blank characters to make the shorter keys as long as the longest key. MSD sorts are not necessarily stable if the original ordering of duplicate keys must always be maintained.