GHW: Sorting Method

Inspiration

Merge sort is a very powerful sorting algorithm which doesn't require any hard-to-understand concepts. Building it from scratch is a great exercise in recursion and divide-and-conquer algorithms.

What it does

The program implements merge sort to sort an input list.

How we built it

The program was written in Python.

Challenges we ran into

There were attempts to minimize memory usage as much as possible but had to settle with creating some partitions of the input list with each recursive step, thus eating up some amount of memory (see README).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Figuring out how to "dump" the contents of one of the sublists after the other one has been completely iterated over was a special eureka moment.

What we learned

The merge sort algorithm involves a simple succession of steps but is nonetheless able to work very efficiently.

What's next for GHW: Sorting Method

Improving space and (possibly) time efficiency by avoiding the need for sublists in intermediate steps.

Built With

• python