Interesting, I had never heard of External Merge Sort before. You are correct in that it does not work on unsigned ints and is unnecessarily slow.<p>An interesting alternative came to my attention in the form of &quot;gnome sort&quot;. Gnome sort is also affectionately know as &quot;stupid sort&quot;. It behaves similarly to bubble sort. Bubble sort &quot;sinks&quot; large elements which allows small elements to &quot;bubble&quot; up. Gnome sort, however, sinks large elements towards the end of the array AND sinks small elements towards the front of the array.<p>More on gnome sort: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gnome_sort" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gnome_sort</a><p>Once again, thanks for reading!