Algorithms For Dummies

  Arranging and Searching Data 

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IN THIS CHAPTER

 

» Performing sorts using Mergesort 

and Quicksort

 

» Conducting searches using trees and 

the heap

 

» Considering the uses for hashing and 

dictionaries

Arranging and 

Searching Data

D

ata surrounds you all the time. In fact, you really can’t get away from it. 

Everything from the data needed to make business work to the nutritional 

guide on the side of your box of cereal relies on data. The four data opera-

tions are create, read, update, and delete (CRUD), which focus on the need to 

access the data you need to perform just about every task in life quickly and easily. 

That’s why having the means to arrange and search data in a number of ways is 

essential. Unless you can access the data when you want in the manner you want, 

the CRUD required to make your business work will become quite cruddy indeed. 

Consequently, this is an especially important chapter for everyone who wants to 

make an application shine.

The first section of this chapter focuses on sorting data. Placing data in an order 

that makes it easy to perform CRUD operations is important because the less code 

you need to make data access work, the better. In addition, even though sorting 

data might not seem particularly important, sorted data makes searches consid-

erably faster, as long as the sort matches the search. Sorting and searching go 

together: You sort the data in a way that makes searching faster.

The second section of the chapter discusses searching. You won’t be surprised 

to  learn  that  many  different  ways  are  available  to  search  for  data.  Some  of 

these techniques are slower than others; some have attributes that make them 

Chapter