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is_stack_sorted

Language/Type: Python list collections

Write a function named is_stack_sorted accepts a list of integers as a parameter and treats it as a stack, returning True if the elements in the stack occur in ascending (non-decreasing) order from bottom (end) to top (front), else False. This essentially means that you are checking whether the list is in reverse-sorted order. An empty or one-element stack is considered to be sorted. For example, if passed the following stack, your function should return True:

[20, 20, 17, 11, 8, 8, 3, 2]

The following stack is not sorted (the 15 is out of place), so passing it to your function should return a result of False:

[18, 12, 15, 6, 1]

You should treat the list as a stack and not use any index-related operations on it. This means that the only operations you should use on the list are the pop and append functions and the len function. You should not use the [] indexing operator nor any other operations that depend on accessing various elements by index. You also should not use a for-each loop over the stack's elements.

When your function returns, the stack should be in the same state as when it was passed in. In other words, if your function modifies the stack, you must restore it before returning.

Constraints: You may use one list as auxiliary storage. Do not declare any other auxiliary data structures, but you can have as many simple variables as you like. Your solution should run in O(N) time, where N is the number of elements of the list.

Function: Write a Python function as described, not a complete program.

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