Data Structures

Topic: Merge Sort

By
Ravi Kant Sahu
Asst. Professor

Lovely Professional University, Punjab

 Divide and Conquer
 Recursive in structure
 Divide the problem into sub-problems that are
similar to the original but smaller in size

 Conquer the sub-problems by solving them

recursively. If they are small enough, just solve
them in a straightforward manner.

 Combine the solutions to create a solution to the

original problem

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 An Example: Merge Sort
Sorting Problem: Sort a sequence of n elements into
non-decreasing order.

 Divide: Divide the n-element sequence to be

sorted into two subsequences of n/2 elements each
 Conquer: Sort the two subsequences recursively
using merge sort.
 Combine: Merge the two sorted subsequences to
produce the sorted answer.

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 Merge Sort – Example
Original Sequence Sorted Sequence
18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1 1 6 9 15 18 26 32 43

18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1 6 18 26 32 1 9 15 43
43

18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1 18 26 6 32 15 43 1 9

18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1 18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1

18 26 32 6 43 15 9 1

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 Work Space

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 Merge-Sort (A, p, r)
INPUT: a sequence of n numbers stored in array A
OUTPUT: an ordered sequence of n numbers

MergeSort (A, p, r) // sort A[p..r] by divide & conquer

1 if p < r
2 then q  (p+r)/2
3 MergeSort (A, p, q)
4 MergeSort (A, q+1, r)
5 Merge (A, p, q, r) // merges A[p..q] with A[q+1..r]

Initial Call: MergeSort(A, 1, n)

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 Procedure Merge
Merge(A, p, q, r)
1 n1  q – p + 1
2 n2  r – q Input: Array containing
3 for i  1 to n1
4 do L[i]  A[p + i – 1]
sorted subarrays A[p..q]
5 for j  1 to n2 and A[q+1..r].
6 do R[j]  A[q + j]
7 L[n1+1]   Output: Merged sorted
8 R[n2+1]   subarray in A[p..r].
9 i1
10 j  1
11 for k p to r
12 do if L[i]  R[j]
13 then A[k]  L[i]
14 ii+1 Sentinels, to avoid having to
15 else A[k]  R[j] check if either subarray is
16 jj+1
fully copied at each step.

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 Work Space

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 Merge – Example
A … 61 86 26
8 32 1 32
9 26 9 42 43 …
k k k k k k k k k

L 6 8 26 32  R 1 9 42 43 
i i i i i j j j j j

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