Write it, run it, read the output

This is a scratch drill — your code runs, nothing is graded or recorded. No test cases, no expected output, no verdict.

TASK

Implement top-down merge sort for the tagged array [6, 3a, 8, 2, 5, 3b, 7, 1]. Compare elements by numeric value, use half-open ranges and one reusable temporary array, and print the sorted array with each tag preserved.

[1, 2, 3a, 3b, 5, 6, 7, 8]