Stooge sort

Stooge sort is a recursive sorting algorithm. It is notable for its exceptionally poor time complexity of = The algorithm's running time is thus slower compared to reasonable sorting algorithms, and is slower than bubble sort, a canonical example of a fairly inefficient sort. It is, however, more efficient than Slowsort. The name comes from The Three Stooges.

The algorithm is defined as follows: If the value at the start is larger than the value at the end, swap them. If there are three or more elements in the list, then: Stooge sort the initial 2/3 of the list Stooge sort the final 2/3 of the list Stooge sort the initial 2/3 of the list again

It is important to get the integer sort size used in the recursive calls by rounding the 2/3 upwards, e.g. rounding 2/3 of 5 should give 4 rather than 3, as otherwise the sort can fail on certain data.

Implementation Pseudocode function stoogesort(array L, i = 0, j = length(L)-1){ if L[i] > L[j] then // If the leftmost element is larger than the rightmost element swap(L[i],L[j]) // Then swap them if (j - i + 1) > 2 then // If there are at least 3 elements in the array t = floor((j - i + 1) / 3) stoogesort(L, i, j-t) // Sort the first 2/3 of the array stoogesort(L, i+t, j) // Sort the last 2/3 of the array stoogesort(L, i, j-t) // Sort the first 2/3 of the array again return L

References

Sources

External links Sorting Algorithms (including Stooge sort) Stooge sort – implementation and comparison