> Only if you assume a finite alphabet and bounded length
You can generally reduce the problem to a finite alphabet by taking the finite subset that actually appears in the input.
If you have an unbounded length then you can make sorting O(l n) where `l` is a bound on the lengths of your input. It's still linear in n, and also better than the O(l n logn) you would with traditional comparison based algorithms once you factor in the O(l) complexity of the comparison function for such elements.
You can generally reduce the problem to a finite alphabet by taking the finite subset that actually appears in the input.
If you have an unbounded length then you can make sorting O(l n) where `l` is a bound on the lengths of your input. It's still linear in n, and also better than the O(l n logn) you would with traditional comparison based algorithms once you factor in the O(l) complexity of the comparison function for such elements.