How to resolve the algorithm Sorting algorithms/Bogosort step by step in the C programming language

Published on 7 June 2024 03:52 AM
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How to resolve the algorithm Sorting algorithms/Bogosort step by step in the C programming language

Table of Contents

Problem Statement

Bogosort a list of numbers.

Bogosort simply shuffles a collection randomly until it is sorted. "Bogosort" is a perversely inefficient algorithm only used as an in-joke.
Its average run-time is   O(n!)   because the chance that any given shuffle of a set will end up in sorted order is about one in   n   factorial,   and the worst case is infinite since there's no guarantee that a random shuffling will ever produce a sorted sequence. Its best case is   O(n)   since a single pass through the elements may suffice to order them.

Pseudocode:

The Knuth shuffle may be used to implement the shuffle part of this algorithm.

Let's start with the solution:

Step by Step solution about How to resolve the algorithm Sorting algorithms/Bogosort step by step in the C programming language

The provided C code implements the notorious "bogosort" algorithm, which despite its name is actually a demonstration of how absurdly slow some sorting algorithms can be.

Here's a summary of what the code does:

  1. Header Files:

    • The code includes several header files:
      • <stdio.h> for input and output functions.
      • <stdlib.h> for the rand function used for randomization.
      • <stdbool.h> for the boolean data type bool.
  2. Function is_sorted:

    • This function checks if an array a of n elements is sorted in ascending order.
    • It iterates through the array and checks if each element is less than the previous one.
    • If any pair of adjacent elements is out of order, the function returns false.
    • If the loop completes without finding any misordered pairs, the function returns true.
  3. Function shuffle:

    • This function shuffles the elements of an array a of n elements.
    • It uses a series of random swaps to rearrange the elements.
    • For each element a[i], it generates a random index r and swaps a[i] with a[r].
  4. Function bogosort:

    • This is the main sorting algorithm, known as "bogosort."
    • It repeatedly shuffles the array until it becomes sorted (as checked by the is_sorted function).
    • This is a notoriously slow and inefficient sorting algorithm, hence the humorous name.
  5. Main Function:

    • The main function initializes an array numbers with six unsorted elements.
    • It calls bogosort to sort the array.
    • After sorting, it prints the sorted array to the console.

How Bogosort Works:

Bogosort works by repeatedly shuffling the input array until it accidentally happens to be in sorted order. This is an extremely inefficient approach because the probability of randomly generating a sorted array decreases exponentially with the size of the array.

In practice, bogosort is never used for actual sorting tasks. It serves as a placeholder algorithm to demonstrate the inefficiency of certain sorting algorithms and to illustrate the concept of worst-case complexity.

Source code in the c programming language

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

bool is_sorted(int *a, int n)
{
  while ( --n >= 1 ) {
    if ( a[n] < a[n-1] ) return false;
  }
  return true;
}

void shuffle(int *a, int n)
{
  int i, t, r;
  for(i=0; i < n; i++) {
    t = a[i];
    r = rand() % n;
    a[i] = a[r];
    a[r] = t;
  }
}

void bogosort(int *a, int n)
{
  while ( !is_sorted(a, n) ) shuffle(a, n);
}

int main()
{
  int numbers[] = { 1, 10, 9,  7, 3, 0 };
  int i;

  bogosort(numbers, 6);
  for (i=0; i < 6; i++) printf("%d ", numbers[i]);
  printf("\n");
}


  

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