A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms

Selection Sort Implemented

Here’s a JavaScript implementation of Selection Sort:

function selectionSort(array) {
  for(var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    var lowestNumberIndex = i;
    for(var j = i + 1; j < array.length; j++) {
      if(array[j] < array[lowestNumberIndex]) {
        lowestNumberIndex = j;
      }
    }

    if(lowestNumberIndex != i) {
      var temp = array[i];
      array[i] = array[lowestNumberIndex];
      array[lowestNumberIndex] = temp;
    }
  }
  return array;
}

Let’s break this down. We’ll first present the line of code, followed by its explanation.

for(var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {

Here, we have an outer loop that represents each passthrough of Selection Sort. We then begin keeping track of the index containing ...