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Muhammed H. Alkan
Muhammed H. Alkan

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What is Quicksort

Quicksort is a popular and common sorting algorithm that known to be really efficient. It createn 1959, and published in 1961 by Tony Hoare (He's known for Null reference, Processes and Structured Programming etc. too).

Then, let's get into algorithm. If we need to visualize the algorithm, we can visualize it like this:

Quicksort Algorithm

How algorithm works:

  • Check if list is empty or vice versa
    If the list is one element return the element,
    else, continue to the function.

  • Select a pivot
    Pivot is generally being the first element of list.
    But pivot can be any element of list too.
    For example:

[b, a, d, e, c], Our pivot is b
  • Filter the smaller/bigger numbers than pivot (a) Basically, you should iterate on elements of list, and get the bigger numbers than pivot (a). Then, you should do the same thing for the smaller numbers too. For example:
bigger = Filter numbers in [b, a, d, e, c] bigger than a
smaller = Filter numbers in [b, a, d, e, c] smaller than or equal to a
  • Sort the filtered bigger and smaller numbers and concenate them Now, we will sort (using same algorithm the bigger and smaller numbers to get order in them and concenate it with the pivot (a)
quicksort(smaller) + [a] + quicksort(bigger)

Then we finished our algorithm! Now, let's implement it in Python & OCaml.

I tried to comment Python alot to beginners understand the code.

def quicksort(array):
  if not array: # If list is empty
    return []
  pivot = array[0] # Pivot is the first element of list
  smaller = [n for n in array if n < pivot] # Filter the smaller numbers
  bigger = [n for n in array if n > pivot] # Filter the bigger numbers
  return quicksort(smaller) + [pivot] + quicksort(bigger) # Concenate sorted smaller and sorted bigger with pivot

Now, let's implement it in OCaml!

let rec quicksort list =
    match list with
    | [] -> []
    | pivot :: _ ->
      let smaller = List.filter (fun n -> n < pivot) list in
      let bigger = List.filter (fun n -> n > pivot) list in
      quicksort(smaller) @ [pivot] @ quicksort(bigger)

Let's try to run it in repl

# quicksort [5, 1, 9, 4, 6, 7, 3];;
- : (int * int * int * int * int * int * int) list = [(5, 1, 9, 4, 6, 7, 3)]

It works! (After 18 tries)

And finally, the performance of Quicksort is:

  • Worst performance: O(n2)
  • Average performance: O(n log n)
  • Best performance: O(n log n)

The average and best performance is same.

If we need to visualize the sorted list:

List visualized

(Special thanks to Learn you a Haskell for great good! for photo. It has really good Haskell chapters!)

In the next posts, i'll share the Quickselect algorithm developed by same person developed Quicksort (Tony Hoare)! Goodbye!

Top comments (6)

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tux0r profile image
tux0r • Edited

Despite the name, the quick sort algorithm has a worst-case complexity of O(nĀ²). You might or might not want to try merge sort instead, depending on the size (and sorting state) of your list.

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grayjack profile image
GrayJack

Or you could select a random element to be the pivot, that way you reduce a lot the chances of waving the worst case

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lyfolos profile image
Muhammed H. Alkan

Add it!

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lyfolos profile image
Muhammed H. Alkan

Thanks for reminding me! I just forgot to add it.

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chenge profile image
chenge

quicksort in Ruby. Short and clear.

def qs a
  (pivot = a.pop) ? 
    qs(a.select{|i| i <= pivot}) + [pivot] + qs(a.select{|i| i > pivot}) :
    []
end

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lyfolos profile image
Muhammed H. Alkan • Edited

I just tried to make it more readable for beginners. I can do oneliner in Python and OCaml too.

qs = lambda a: [] if not a else qs([n for n in a if n < a[0]]) + [a[0]] + qs([n for n in a if n > a[0]])

It's still readable, IMO.

So?