Algorithms For Dummies

Chapter 7

Arranging and Searching Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

Performing sorts using Mergesort and Quicksort

Conducting searches using trees and the heap

Considering the uses for hashing and dictionaries

Data surrounds you all the time. In fact, you really can’t get away from it. Everything from the data needed to make business work to the nutritional guide on the side of your box of cereal relies on data. The four data operations are create, read, update, and delete (CRUD), which focus on the need to access the data you need to perform just about every task in life quickly and easily. That’s why having the means to arrange and search data in a number of ways is essential. Unless you can access the data when you want in the manner you want, the CRUD required to make your business work will become quite cruddy indeed. Consequently, this is an especially important chapter for everyone who wants to make an application shine.

The first section of this chapter focuses on sorting data. Placing data in an order that makes it easy to perform CRUD operations is important because the less code you need to make data access work, the better. In addition, even though sorting data might not seem particularly ...