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Bubble sort, sometimes referred to as sinking sort, is a simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly steps through the input list element by element, comparing the current element with the one after it, swapping their values if needed. These passes through the list are repeated until no swaps have to be performed during a pass, meaning that the ...
A bidirectional variant of selection sort (called double selection sort or sometimes cocktail sort due to its similarity to cocktail shaker sort) finds both the minimum and maximum values in the list in every pass. This requires three comparisons per two items (a pair of elements is compared, then the greater is compared to the maximum and the ...
Merge sort. In computer science, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list into an order.The most frequently used orders are numerical order and lexicographical order, and either ascending or descending.
If different items have different sort key values then this defines a unique order of the items. Workers sorting parcels in a postal facility. A standard order is often called ascending (corresponding to the fact that the standard order of numbers is ascending, i.e. A to Z, 0 to 9), the reverse order descending (Z to A, 9 to 0).
Quicksort is a comparison sort, meaning that it can sort items of any type for which a "less-than" relation (formally, a total order) is defined. It is a comparison-based sort since elements a and b are only swapped in case their relative order has been obtained in the transitive closure of prior comparison-outcomes.
Sorted arrays are the most space-efficient data structure with the best locality of reference for sequentially stored data. [citation needed]Elements within a sorted array are found using a binary search, in O(log n); thus sorted arrays are suited for cases when one needs to be able to look up elements quickly, e.g. as a set or multiset data structure.
In computing, natural sort order (or natural sorting) is the ordering of strings in alphabetical order, except that multi-digit numbers are treated atomically, i.e., as if they were a single character. Natural sort order has been promoted as being more human-friendly ("natural") than machine-oriented, pure alphabetical sort order.
A circularly linked list may be a natural option to represent arrays that are naturally circular, e.g. the corners of a polygon, a pool of buffers that are used and released in FIFO ("first in, first out") order, or a set of processes that should be time-shared in round-robin order. In these applications, a pointer to any node serves as a ...