Quicksort Sorting Algorithm in Java

Quicksort Sorting Algorithm in Java

Quicksort algorithm is one of the most used sorting algorithm, especially to sort large list and most of the programming languages, library have implemented it in one or another way. In Java, Arrays.sort() method sorts primitive data types using double pivot Quicksort algorithm, authored by Joshua Bloach and others. This implementation provides better performance for lot of data sets, where traditional quicksort algorithm reduced into quadratic performance. This method also uses MergeSort, another good sorting algorithm, to sort objects. QuickSort implementations are also available in C++ STL library. Have you ever thought why quicksort is so popular? because on average it is one of the fastest sorting algorithm we have. On average quicksort is a O(n log n) algorithm, while it's worst case is O(n^2), which is much better comparing with Bubble Sort or Insertion Sort. It's also one of the popular algorithm interview question, so as a programmer you must know how QuickSort works as well as how to implement Quicksort in Java or any other programming language. One of the most important thing interviewer look in your quicksort implementation is choice of pivot and whether you are sorting in place or not. In "in-place" sorting, actual sorting takes place in same array and no additional space is needed. Due to this reason, quicksort is very efficient in sorting large list of numbers, as no additional memory is required, a very space efficient sorting algorithm. Quicksort is also one of the naturally recursive algorithm and serves a good exercise for Java programmers to master art of recursion.