Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Timsort is a hybrid, stable sorting algorithm, derived from merge sort and insertion sort, designed to perform well on many kinds of real-world data.It was implemented by Tim Peters in 2002 for use in the Python programming language.
Stable sort algorithms sort equal elements in the same order that they appear in the input. For example, in the card sorting example to the right, the cards are being sorted by their rank, and their suit is being ignored. This allows the possibility of multiple different correctly sorted versions of the original list.
More generally objects can be sorted based on a property. 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.
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.
For example, bubble sort is () on a list that is already sorted, while quicksort would still perform its entire () sorting process. While any sorting algorithm can be made O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} on a presorted list simply by checking the list before the algorithm runs, improved performance on almost-sorted lists is harder to replicate.
In computer science, Merge Sort (also commonly spelled as mergesort and as merge-sort [2]) is an efficient, general-purpose, and comparison-based sorting algorithm.Most implementations produce a stable sort, which means that the relative order of equal elements is the same in the input and output.
A list containing a single element is, by definition, sorted. Repeatedly merge sublists to create a new sorted sublist until the single list contains all elements. The single list is the sorted list. The merge algorithm is used repeatedly in the merge sort algorithm. An example merge sort is given in the illustration.
The algorithm indexes three locations, the bottom of the top group, the top of the bottom group, and the top of the middle group. Elements that are yet to be sorted fall between the middle and the top group. [4] At each step, examine the element just above the middle. If it belongs to the top group, swap it with the element just below the top.