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I'm trying to get a list of the 10 oldest users. This is the endpoint I'm using:

http://api.stackoverflow.com/0.8/users?key=(key)&order=asc&sort=creation&pagesize=10&page=0

According to StackOverflow, they should be coming back as:

  • Community
  • Jarrod Dixon
  • Geoff Dalgas
  • Jeff Atwood
  • Jon Galloway
  • Joel Spolsky
  • Eggs McLaren
  • Kevin Dente
  • Sneakers O'Toole
  • Chris Jester-Young

However, the JSON I'm getting back has them in this order:

  • Community
  • Jeff Atwood
  • Geoff Dalgas
  • Jarrod Dixon
  • Joel Spolsky
  • Jon Galloway
  • Eggs McLaren
  • Kevin Dente
  • Sneakers O'Toole

What gives?

edit

a bit more information: Jarrod, Geoff, Jeff, Jon, and Joel all have the same creation date (1217514151, or Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:22:31 GMT). So perhaps a better question is:

Is there defined behavior for sort ordering when two attributes have the same value?

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1 Answer 1

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1

Sorts are not guaranteed to be stable. Check the creation_date on each user to convince yourself they are in order.

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  • Jeff, Geoff, Jarrod, Joel, and Jon all have the same creation date (1217514151). I think that's what the problem is. Commented Jun 5, 2010 at 0:10
  • @Dave - its not a problem, like I said sorts are not guaranteed to be stable (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_sort#Stability) Commented Jun 5, 2010 at 0:23

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