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Everyday data structures

You're reading from   Everyday data structures A practical guide to learning data structures simply and easily

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Product type Paperback
Published in Mar 2017
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781787121041
Length 344 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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William Smith William Smith
Author Profile Icon William Smith
William Smith
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Toc

Table of Contents (14) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Data Types: Foundational Structures FREE CHAPTER 2. Arrays: Foundational Collections 3. Lists: Linear Collections 4. Stacks: LIFO Collections 5. Queues: FIFO Collections 6. Dictionaries: Keyed Collections 7. Sets: No Duplicates 8. Structs: Complex Types 9. Trees: Non-Linear Structures 10. Heaps: Ordered Trees 11. Graphs: Values with Relationships 12. Sorting: Bringing Order Out Of Chaos 13. Searching: Finding What You Need

Merge sort

Merge sort is another popular version of the divide and conquer algorithm. It is a very efficient, general-purpose sort algorithm. The algorithm gets is named from the fact that it divides the collection in half, recursively sorts each half, and then merges the two sorted halves back together. Each half of the collection is repeatedly halved until there is only one object in the half, at which point it is sorted by definition. As each sorted half is merged, the algorithm compares the objects to determine where to place each sub set.

As far as divide and conquer algorithms are concerned, merge sort is one of the most efficient algorithms. The algorithm has a worst-, average- and best- case complexity of O(n log(n)), making it an improvement over quick sort even in the worst circumstances.

C#

    public void MergeSort(int[] values, int left, int right) 
    { 
      if (left == right) 
        return; 
 
      if (left < right) 
      { 
        int middle = (left + right...
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