On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Jabba Laci <jabba.l...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > >> Either you're misremembering, or the algorithm you programmed 43 years >> ago was not actually bubble sort. Quoting from Wikipedia: >> >> """ >> Bubble sort, also known as sinking sort, is a simple sorting algorithm >> that works by repeatedly stepping through the list to be sorted, >> comparing each pair of adjacent items and swapping them if they are in >> the wrong order. The pass through the list is repeated until no swaps >> are needed, which indicates that the list is sorted. The algorithm >> gets its name from the way smaller elements "bubble" to the top of the >> list. >> """ > > I don't agree with the last sentence. During bubble sort, in the 1st > pass the largest element is moved to the top (for me "top" means the > right side (end) of an array). Thus the end of the array is sorted. In > the 2nd pass, the largest element of the unsorted left part is moved > to the end, etc. That is, it's the _larger_ elements that bubble to > the top. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_sort you can find an > animated gif that shows how the algorithm works.
I think that by "top" they mean "front". Each largest element in turn gets moved to the end in a single pass. It is the smaller elements gradually moving toward the front over many passes that I believe is described as "bubbling", as can be seen in that gif. > If the "noname" algorithm is called "selection sort", then its name > can be misleading. One may ask "OK, but which one? Minimum or maximum > selection sort?". Well, neither... It is a minimum selection sort, because it selects the minimum element on each pass. It just stores the minimum element so far in-place in the array, rather than in a separate variable. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
