Selection Insertion
Selection Insertion
It finds that both 14 and 33 are already in ascending order. For now, 14 is in sorted
sub-list.
It swaps 33 with 27. It also checks with all the elements of sorted sub-list. Here we see
that the sorted sub-list has only one element 14, and 27 is greater than 14. Hence, the
sorted sub-list remains sorted after swapping.
By now we have 14 and 27 in the sorted sub-list. Next, it compares 33 with 10.
So we swap them.
We swap them again. By the end of third iteration, we have a sorted sub-list of 4 items.
This process goes on until all the unsorted values are covered in a sorted sub-list. Now
we shall see some programming aspects of insertion sort.
Algorithm
Now we have a bigger picture of how this sorting technique works, so we can derive
simple steps by which we can achieve insertion sort.
Step 1 − If it is the first element, it is already sorted. return 1;
Step 2 − Pick next element
Step 3 − Compare with all elements in the sorted sub-list
Step 4 − Shift all the elements in the sorted sub-list that is greater than the
value to be sorted
Step 5 − Insert the value
Step 6 − Repeat until list is sorted
Pseudocode
procedure insertionSort( A : array of items )
int holePosition
int valueToInsert
for i = 1 to length(A) inclusive do:
valueToInsert = A[i]
holePosition = i
end for
end procedure
Selection Sort
Consider the following depicted array as an example.
For the first position in the sorted list, the whole list is scanned sequentially. The first
position where 14 is stored presently, we search the whole list and find that 10 is the
lowest value.
So we replace 14 with 10. After one iteration 10, which happens to be the minimum
value in the list, appears in the first position of the sorted list.
For the second position, where 33 is residing, we start scanning the rest of the list in a
linear manner.
We find that 14 is the second lowest value in the list and it should appear at the second
place. We swap these values.
After two iterations, two least values are positioned at the beginning in a sorted
manner.
The same process is applied to the rest of the items in the array.
Following is a pictorial depiction of the entire sorting process −
Now, let us learn some programming aspects of selection sort.
Algorithm
for i = 1 to n - 1
/* set current element as minimum*/
min = i
for j = i+1 to n
if list[j] < list[min] then
min = j;
end if
end for
end procedure