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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 ...