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In computer science, merge sort (also commonly spelled as mergesort and as merge-sort [2]) is an efficient, general-purpose, and comparison-based sorting algorithm. Most implementations produce a stable sort , which means that the relative order of equal elements is the same in the input and output.
Repeatedly merge sublists to create a new sorted sublist until the single list contains all elements. The single list is the sorted list. The merge algorithm is used repeatedly in the merge sort algorithm. An example merge sort is given in the illustration. It starts with an unsorted array of 7 integers. The array is divided into 7 partitions ...
Insertion sort is widely used for small data sets, while for large data sets an asymptotically efficient sort is used, primarily heapsort, merge sort, or quicksort. Efficient implementations generally use a hybrid algorithm , combining an asymptotically efficient algorithm for the overall sort with insertion sort for small lists at the bottom ...
An example of such is the classic merge that appears frequently in merge sort examples. The classic merge outputs the data item with the lowest key at each step; given some sorted lists, it produces a sorted list containing all the elements in any of the input lists, and it does so in time proportional to the sum of the lengths of the input lists.
Batcher's odd–even mergesort [1] is a generic construction devised by Ken Batcher for sorting networks of size O(n (log n) 2) and depth O((log n) 2), where n is the number of items to be sorted. Although it is not asymptotically optimal, Knuth concluded in 1998, with respect to the AKS network that "Batcher's method is much better, unless n ...
External sorting algorithms generally fall into two types, distribution sorting, which resembles quicksort, and external merge sort, which resembles merge sort. External merge sort typically uses a hybrid sort-merge strategy. In the sorting phase, chunks of data small enough to fit in main memory are read, sorted, and written out to a temporary ...
Block sort, or block merge sort, is a sorting algorithm combining at least two merge operations with an insertion sort to arrive at O(n log n) (see Big O notation) in-place stable sorting time. It gets its name from the observation that merging two sorted lists, A and B , is equivalent to breaking A into evenly sized blocks , inserting each A ...
A polyphase merge sort is a variation of a bottom-up merge sort that sorts a list using an initial uneven distribution of sub-lists (runs), primarily used for external sorting, and is more efficient than an ordinary merge sort when there are fewer than eight external working files (such as a tape drive or a file on a hard drive).