Sorting and Searching Algorithms: A Cookbook

Niemann T.

This is a collection of algorithms for sorting and searching. Descriptions are brief and intuitive, with just enough theory thrown in to make you nervous. I assume you know a high-level language, such as C, and that you are familiar with programming concepts including arrays and pointers. The first section introduces basic data structures and notation. The next section presents several sorting algorithms. This is followed by a section on dictionaries, structures that allow efficient insert, search, and delete operations. The last section describes algorithms that sort data and implement dictionaries for very large files. Source code for each algorithm, in ANSI C, is available at the site listed below. Most algorithms have also been translated to Visual Basic. If you are programming in Visual Basic, I recommend you read Visual Basic Collections and Hash Tables, for an explanation of hashing and node representation. Permission to reproduce portions of this document is given provided the web site listed below is referenced, and no additional restrictions apply. Source code, when part of a software project, may be used freely without reference to the author.

---

Table of contents :
Preface……Page 2
Arrays……Page 4
Linked Lists……Page 5
Summary……Page 6
Insertion Sort……Page 7
Shell Sort……Page 8
Quicksort……Page 9
Comparison……Page 12
Hash Tables……Page 14
Binary Search Trees……Page 18
Red-Black Trees……Page 21
Skip Lists……Page 24
Comparison……Page 25
External Sorting……Page 28
B-Trees……Page 31
Bibliography……Page 34