Thank you for your excellent work on `sort` and related functionality! Unfortunately, the new `sort` implementation occasionally crashes with a segfault. The following code reproduces that in current master: (dotimes (i 500) (sort (make-list 128 42) :key (lambda (n) (make-list i n)))) It happens for inputs of length >= `MERGESTATE_TEMP_SIZE / 2` (= 128 currently) along with a non-NIL `:key` function. In such cases, a `Lisp_Object` array is explicitly heap-allocated to store the keys, which is never marked against GC. This would not be a problem if not for the fact that the `:key` function call may trigger GC. I'm attaching a patch with a proposed solution, consisting of three changes: 1. Allocate with `xzalloc` to have the new array initialized to `Qnil`. This ensures its objects can be marked properly. 2. Mark `ms->allocated_keys` in `merge_markmem`. We don't need to check that `ms->allocated_keys != NULL`, as `merge_register_cleanup` is only called under this exact condition. 3. Move the computation of keys (which may trigger a GC) after `merge_init`, which registers `merge_markmem`. I hope this is useful. Cheers, Aris