in reply to Funky sorting

. . . a bubble sort seemed to be correct for this.

I have nothing constructive to offer, I just wanted to thank you for the best laugh I've had today.

Update: It's been brought to my attention that my remark may need some explanation. Basically, nobody with any formal computer science training would ever just use a bubble sort for generic sorting. BS is O(n^2) (CS talk that it performs on the order of the square of the number of elements to be sorted) with a terrible average performance. Perl's builtin sort uses quicksort which is O(n log n) for instance. There are cases where a bubble sort can work (e.g. you know your initial ordering is almost sorted), but for the most part you want to steer clear of it.

For more information, see a text such as Volume Three of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming or Mastering Algorithms with Perl (ISBN 1565923987).

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Re: Re: Funky sorting
by cacharbe (Curate) on Nov 10, 2001 at 07:41 UTC
    Never fear, fletch, I chuckled as well, though it was a rueful one.

    General Plea - Please, please, please read Mastering Algorithms, or any algorithms book that discusses sorting (and a good one will).

    General Rant - I don't know how many times a week I point out logical faults, sorting faux pas, etc. to those that wouldn't have made the errors if they would simply RTFM (I suppose that this rant has more deep seated roots...). I even suggest and offer examples from my ample at work library, but they just don't care. It blemishes the good name of legitimate programmers everywhere. I'm not suggesting that this is a case of that, but it just touches a nerve.

    C-.

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