how do you sort in c

[joker_tony]

i have been doing my research and i cant find out how to sort numbers in C. can someone tell me the code please

[tabstop]

There's lots of ways to sort: bubble sort, quicksort, heapsort, mergesort, ................ There's nothing C specific about sorting. (Except perhaps that the standard C library does contain a quicksort implementation.)

[MK27]

You want to put the elements into an array, then call a function that compares each element to the next one in a for loop, reverses them if necessary, and trips a switch to indicate a change was made. If the switch has been tripped by the end of the for, the function calls itself recursively (using the newly ordered array) until it makes it through the loop without tripping the switch -- meaning the array is now sorted.

for character strings, have a look at this:
http://www.intergate.com/~halfcountp...phabetize.html

[MK27]

this is a simplified illustration with numbers:

#include <stdio.h>

void sortnumbers (short int *ray) {
	short int sw=0, i, tmp;
	for (i=0;i<9;i++) {	// don't compare 10th to 10th+1...
		if (ray[i] > ray[i+1]) {
			tmp=ray[i];
			ray[i]=ray[i+1];
			ray[i+1]=tmp;
			sw++;
	}	}
	if (sw > 0) sortnumbers(ray);
}
	

int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
	short int n[10], i, x=0; 
	for (i=32; i>2; i-=3) {n[x]=i;x++;}
	for (i=0;i<10;i++) printf("%d ",n[i]);
	sortnumbers(n);
	puts("sorted:");
	for (i=0;i<10;i++) printf("%d ",n[i]);
}

[laserlight]

i have been doing my research and i cant find out how to sort numbers in C. can someone tell me the code please

Unless you have special requirements on the sort algorithm, use qsort(). Note that the cppreference.com page I linked to has an example that sorts integers, but you need to #include <stdlib.h>, not <cstdlib>, since this is C, not C++. This is what tabstop meant by hinting that "the standard C library does contain a quicksort implementation", though the C standard does not seem to actually mandate quicksort as the algorithm.

You want to put the elements into an array, then call a function that compares each element to the next one in a for loop, reverses them if necessary, and trips a switch to indicate a change was made. If the switch has been tripped by the end of the for, the function calls itself recursively (using the newly ordered array) until it makes it through the loop without tripping the switch -- meaning the array is now sorted.

That sounds like a recursive bubble sort, which is vastly inferior to quicksort for general purpose sorting of an array.

[MK27]

That sounds like a recursive bubble sort, which is vastly inferior to quicksort for general purpose sorting of an array.

Do you mean in terms of speed and memory use? After all, either it's sorted right, or it isn't.

[FillYourBrain]

its a matter of sorting faster. bubble sort is painfully slow

[master5001]

Take a look at this. Its a safe executeable, don't worry. It was written by iMalc.

If you play with it for a bit you will soon realize that perhaps the speed differencial is significant.