Learn Web Development with Python

Example one – concurrent mergesort

The first example will revolve around the mergesort algorithm. This sorting algorithm is based on the divide et impera (divide and conquer) design paradigm. The way it works is very simple. You have a list of numbers you want to sort. The first step is to divide the list into two parts, sort them, and merge the results back into one sorted list. Let me give you a simple example with six numbers. Imagine we have a list, v=[8, 5, 3, 9, 0, 2]. The first step would be to divide the list, v, into two sublists of three numbers: v1=[8, 5, 3] and v2=[9, 0, 2]. Then we sort v1 and v2 by recursively calling mergesort on them. The result would be v1=[3, 5, 8] and v2=[0, 2, 9]. In order to combine v1 and v2 back into ...