quicksort
Speech parts
1. quicksort - Noun
2. quicksort - Verb
Meaning
quicksort (plural quicksorts)
(computing) A sorting algorithm that operates by recursively partitioning the items to be sorted into two sets.
quicksort (third-person singular simple present quicksorts, present participle quicksorting, simple past and past participle quicksorted)
(transitive, computing) To sort with such an algorithm.
Examples
A simple one is the median of three rule, which estimates the median as the median of a three-element subsample; this is commonly used as a subroutine in the quicksort sorting algorithm, which uses an estimate of its input's median.
Each has advantages and drawbacks, with the most significant being that simple implementation of merge sort uses O(n) additional space, and simple implementation of quicksort has O(n 2 ) worst-case complexity.
Efficient sorts Practical general sorting algorithms are almost always based on an algorithm with average time complexity (and generally worst-case complexity) O(n log n), of which the most common are heap sort, merge sort, and quicksort.
Efficient implementations of quicksort (with in-place partitioning) are typically unstable sorts and somewhat complex, but are among the fastest sorting algorithms in practice.
In-place MSD radix sort implementations Binary MSD radix sort, also called binary quicksort, can be implemented in-place by splitting the input array into two bins - the 0s bin and the 1s bin.
Insertion sort is widely used for small data sets, while for large data sets an asymptotically efficient sort is used, primarily heap sort, merge sort, or quicksort.