Java 9 Programming By Example

Quick sort

Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare developed the quick sort algorithm in 1959. It is a typical divide and conquer algorithm. To sort a long array, pick an element from the array that will be the pivot element. Then, partition the array so that the left side will contain all the elements that are smaller than the pivot and the right side will contain all the elements that are larger than, or equal to the pivot. When this is done, the left side and the right side of the array can be sorted by calling the sort recursively. To stop the recursion, when we have one single element in the array, we will declare it sorted.

We talk about a recursive algorithm when the algorithm is defined partially using itself. The most famous recursive definition ...