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From: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Subject: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?
Date: 1996/08/20
Message-ID: <qqafvqvwls.fsf@tartarus.ucsd.edu>#1/1
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sender: djohnson@tartarus.ucsd.edu
references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4uo74j$95p@ns.broadvision.com>
organization: UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Department
newsgroups: 
 comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Date: 1996-08-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


> Why not just pick the pivot randomly?  This was suggested by Hoare in
> 1962.

I seem to recall a paper or method that basically said that the better
you picked your pivot, the better the quicksort, and then gave some
alternatives.  My recollection was that you could pick a quick set of
points (first, last, middle; or all random) and then choose the median
of that set.

And of course, you can always sort in O(n) as long as you have a
finite set of things to sort :-)  (actually, in O(1) theoretically
but real world implications say that a finite 'n' is still an 'n')
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu	O-
    "Floyd here now!"