NPTEL MOOC
PROGRAMMING,
DATA STRUCTURES AND
ALGORITHMS IN PYTHON
Week 4, Lecture 3
Madhavan Mukund, Chennai Mathematical Institute
[Link]
Merge Sort: Shortcomings
Merging A and B creates a new array C
No obvious way to efficiently merge in place
Extra storage can be costly
Inherently recursive
Recursive call and return are expensive
Alternative approach
Extra space is required to merge
Merging happens because elements in left half
must move right and vice versa
Can we divide so that everything to the left is
smaller than everything to the right?
No need to merge!
Divide and conquer without merging
Suppose the median value in A is m
Move all values ≤ m to left half of A
Right half has values > m
This shifting can be done in place, in time O(n)
Recursively sort left and right halves
A is now sorted! No need to merge
T(n) = 2T(n/2) + n = O(n log n)
Divide and conquer without merging
How do we find the median?
Sort and pick up middle element
But our aim is to sort!
Instead, pick up some value in A — pivot
Split A with respect to this pivot element
Quicksort
Choose a pivot element
Typically the first value in the array
Partition A into lower and upper parts with respect
to pivot
Move pivot between lower and upper partition
Recursively sort the two partitions
Quicksort
High level view
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort
High level view
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort
High level view
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort
High level view
13 32 22 43 63 57 91 78
Quicksort
High level view
13 22 32 43 57 63 78 91
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 78 63 57 91 13
Quicksort: Partitioning
43 32 22 13 63 57 91 78
Quicksort: Partitioning
13 32 22 43 63 57 91 78
Quicksort in Python
def Quicksort(A,l,r): # Sort A[l:r]
if r - l <= 1: # Base case
return ()
# Partition with respect to pivot, a[l]
yellow = l+1
for green in range(l+1,r):
if A[green] <= A[l]:
(A[yellow],A[green]) = (A[green],A[yellow])
yellow = yellow + 1
# Move pivot into place
(A[l],A[yellow-1]) = (A[yellow-1],A[l])
Quicksort(A,l,yellow-1) # Recursive calls
Quicksort(A,yellow,r)