Data Structures Using C, 2nd Edition by Pearson

Arrays: Searching and Sorting 119

However if the list is already sorted in the ascending order, no copy operations would be required. It

becomes the best case and the algorithm will have only N comparisons, i.e., a linear running time.

3.2.5.7 Merge Sort This method uses following two concepts:

(1) If a list is empty or it contains only one element, then the list is already sorted. A list that con-

tains only one element is also called singleton.

(2) It uses the old proven technique of

‘divide and conquer’ to recur-

sively divide the list into sub-lists

until it is left with either empty or

singleton lists.

In fact, this algorithm divi ...