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From: andrew@orca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: A Simple Bubble Sort Function
Message-ID: <894@orca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Jun-84 02:54:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: orca.894
Posted: Fri Jun 15 02:54:14 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Jun-84 01:13:56 EDT
References: <965@ihuxq.UUCP> <165@callan.UUCP> <131@godot.UUCP> <2096@mit-eddie.UUCP> <7471@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
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The continued popularity of the bubble sort is perplexing.

In Knuth's "Sorting and Searching" [1], the definitive work on the
subject, the author invests several pages and quite a bit of math in an
exhaustive mathematical analysis of the bubble sort, and concludes:

	"It took a good deal of work to analyze the bubble sort; and
	although the techniques used in the calculations are
	instructive, the results are disappointing since they tell us
	that the bubble sort isn't really very good at all.  Compared
	to straight insertion, bubble sorting requires a more
	complicated program and takes about twice as long!

	"Some suggestions can be given for improving the bubble sort
	... But none of these refinements lead to an algorithm better
	than straight insertion ...

	"In short, the bubble sort seems to have nothing to recommend
	it, except a catchy name and the fact that it leads to some
	interesting theoretical problems."

[1] Knuth, Donald E., "Sorting and Searching", volume 3 of "The Art of
Computer Programming", Addison-Wesley, 1973.

  -- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)      [UUCP]
                       (orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay)  [ARPA]