SORTING ALGORITHMS
Choosing the right sorting algorithm can have a huge impact on application performance. What’s right in one situation isn’t necessarily right for another. Here are some criteria to consider when selecting a sorting algorithm:
- How much data is to be sorted? For small data sets it doesn’t matter which algorithm you choose because there is little difference in the execution times, but for large data sets, the worst-case bounds become radically different. Beware of data sets that are typically small but may occasionally be much larger—you need to select an algorithm that performs acceptably on the largest data sets your code may encounter.
- Does the data fit in memory? Most sorting algorithms are efficient only when the data they operate on resides in memory. If the data set is too large for memory, you may need to split it into smaller chunks for sorting and then combine those sorted chunks to create the final sorted data set.
- Is the data already...
