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qsort is a C standard library function that implements a sorting algorithm for arrays of arbitrary objects according to a user-provided comparison function. It is named after the "quicker sort" algorithm [1] (a quicksort variant due to R. S. Scowen), which was originally used to implement it in the Unix C library, although the C standard does not require it to implement quicksort.
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.
The best case input is an array that is already sorted. In this case insertion sort has a linear running time (i.e., O(n)).During each iteration, the first remaining element of the input is only compared with the right-most element of the sorted subsection of the array.
Sorting small arrays optimally (in the fewest comparisons and swaps) or fast (i.e. taking into account machine-specific details) is still an open research problem, with solutions only known for very small arrays (<20 elements). Similarly optimal (by various definitions) sorting on a parallel machine is an open research topic.
As another example, many sorting algorithms rearrange arrays into sorted order in-place, including: bubble sort, comb sort, selection sort, insertion sort, heapsort, and Shell sort. These algorithms require only a few pointers, so their space complexity is O(log n). [1] Quicksort operates in-place on the data to be sorted.
In computer science, radix sort is a non-comparative sorting algorithm.It avoids comparison by creating and distributing elements into buckets according to their radix.For elements with more than one significant digit, this bucketing process is repeated for each digit, while preserving the ordering of the prior step, until all digits have been considered.
Bucket sort can be implemented with comparisons and therefore can also be considered a comparison sort algorithm. The computational complexity depends on the algorithm used to sort each bucket, the number of buckets to use, and whether the input is uniformly distributed. Bucket sort works as follows: Set up an array of initially empty "buckets".
Such a component or property is called a sort key. For example, the items are books, the sort key is the title, subject or author, and the order is alphabetical. A new sort key can be created from two or more sort keys by lexicographical order. The first is then called the primary sort key, the second the secondary sort key, etc.