Merge sort is a divide and conquer sorting algorithm that works by recursively dividing a list of items into smaller sublists until each sublist consists of a single element, and then merging the sublists back together in a sorted order.
Here is an example of how the merge sort algorithm works, using the following list of numbers as an example:
[8, 5, 3, 1, 9, 6, 0, 7, 4, 2]
- The algorithm starts by dividing the list into two sublists:
[8, 5, 3, 1]and[9, 6, 0, 7, 4, 2]. It then recursively divides each sublist into smaller sublists until each sublist consists of a single element:
[8],[5],[3],[1]
[9], [6], [0], [7], [4], [2]
- It then merges the sublists back together in a sorted order:
[5, 8],[1, 3]
[0, 6, 7], [2, 4, 9]
[1, 3, 5, 8], [0, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9]
- Finally, it merges the two sublists together to produce the final sorted list:
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
I hope this example helps to clarify how the merge sort algorithm works. Let me know if you have any questions!
The algorithm has a time complexity of O(n * log(n)), which makes it more efficient than other sorting algorithms with a quadratic time complexity, such as bubble sort and selection sort. Merge sort is also a stable sort, which means it preserves the relative order of items with equal values. It is a good choice for sorting large lists or lists with many duplicate elements.
| Time Complexity: | 0(n log n) |
|---|---|