Sorting Algorithms

General information

The sorting problem is one of the most frequent algorthmic problems. Its simplest form is to sort a finit set of numbers ascending or descending.

Instead of numbers you can sort any data, e.g. string. There must be a relation between the elements of the set, so to say, an ordering relation [math]\displaystyle{ \leq }[/math] has to be defined.

Often, the data is a set of complex data types, that has to be sorted by a special criteria. For example you have a set of person descriptions to be sorted by the birth dates.