Sorting

We conclude this text with a look at a common activity in computing, namely, sorting data. While .NET provides several methods for sorting data, it is instructive to examine the implementation details of different techniques. While there is one sorting algorithm that is used more commonly than the others, none is best for all situations. An understanding of which algorithms perform better in different situations can help us to make better choices and thereby achieve better performance for the software we build. Furthermore, because there are so many different approaches to sorting, studying the various techniques can help us to see how different approaches can be used for the same problem in order to obtain different algorithms.

In this chapter, we will consider several sorting algorithms, but not nearly all of them. In the first four sections, we will focus on algorithms that can be applied to any data type that can sorted; thus, we will only consider algorithms that operate by comparing data elements to each other. Most of these algorithms can be divided into four general approaches. We consider each of these approaches separately. We then conclude with an algorithm designed specifically for sorting strings.