A faster sort for strings has been published as part of SortingLab.jl. The function is radixsort
example code below
Pkg.add("SortingLab") # run once
sv = [randstring(8) for i=1:Int(1e6)];
svs = radixsort(sv) # faster than sort
svsp = fsortperm(sv) .|> Int # faster than sortperm
issorted(sv[svsp])
My PR to SortingAlgorithms.jl has hit a little bit of a snag, hence this new package - SortingLab.jl; but I do intend to use SortingLab.jl as more or less a playground for new ideas. Mature ideas that work I will try to contribute back to Base or SortingAlgorithms.