Merge algorithm

Merge algorithms are a family of algorithms that take multiple sorted lists as input and produce a single list as output, containing all the elements of the inputs lists in sorted order. These algorithms are used as subroutines in various sorting algorithms, most famously merge sort.

Application

The merge algorithm plays a critical role in the merge sort algorithm, a comparison-based sorting algorithm. Conceptually, merge sort algorithm consists of two steps:

The merge algorithm is used repeatedly in the merge sort algorithm.

An example merge sort is given above. It starts with an unsorted array of 7 integers. The array is divided into 7 partitions; each partition contains 1 element and is sorted. The sorted partitions are then merged to produce larger, sorted, partitions, until 1 partition, the sorted array, is left.