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Simple Sorts: Bubble and Selection

Sorting puts items in order, and it makes searching faster. Two simple methods:

  • Bubble sort walks the list, swapping neighbours that are out of order. After each pass the largest unsorted item has "bubbled" to the end.
  • Selection sort finds the smallest remaining item and swaps it into the next position.

Both use nested loops, so both are O(n squared): fine for a few dozen items, painfully slow for thousands. They are worth learning because they are easy to understand.

Examplepython
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Quick check

What is the Big O of bubble sort?

Your turn: write the code

Do ONE pass of bubble sort (swap every out-of-order neighbour pair once, left to right) and print the list.

Finish the quick check (and any code exercise) to complete this lesson, or mark it done yourself.

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