Merge sort

In computer science, merge sort or mergesort is a sorting algorithm for rearranging lists (or any other data structure that can only be accessed sequentially, e.g. file streams) into a specified order. It is a particularly good example of the divide and conquer algorithmic paradigm. It is a comparison sort.

Algorithm

Conceptually, merge sort works as follows:

Divide the unsorted list into two sublists of about half the size
Sort each of the two sublists
Merge the two sorted sublists back into one sorted list.

The algorithm was invented by John von Neumann in 1945.

In a simple pseudocode form, the algorithm could look something like this:

function mergesort(m) var list left, right if length(m) ≤ 1 return m else middle = length(m) / 2 for each x in m up to middle add x to left for each x in m after middle add x to right left = mergesort(left) right = mergesort(right) result = merge(left, right) return result

There are several variants for the merge() function, the simplest variant could look like this:

function merge(left,right) var list result while length(left) > 0 and length(right) > 0 if first(left) ≤ first(right) append first(left) to result left = rest(left) else append first(right) to result right = rest(right) if length(left) > 0 append left to result if length(right) > 0 append right to result return result

Analysis

In sorting n items, merge sort has an average and worst-case performance of O(n log n). If the running time of merge sort for a list of length n is T(n), then the recurrence T(n) = 2T(n/2) + n follows from the definition of the algorithm (apply the algorithm to two lists of half the size of the original list, and add the n steps taken to merge the resulting two lists). The closed form follows from the master theorem.

In the worst case, merge sort does exactly (n ⌈log n⌉ - 2^⌈log n⌉ + 1) comparisons, which is between (n log n - n + 1) and
(n log n - 0.9139·n + 1) are base 2. Note, the worst case number given here does not agree with that given in Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, Vol 3. The discrepancy is due to Knuth analyzing a variant implementation of merge sort that is slightly sub-optimal.

For large n and a randomly ordered input list, merge sort's expected (average) number of comparisons approaches α·n fewer than the worst case, where α = -1 + ∑ 1/(2^k +1), k = 0 → ∞, α ≈ 0.2645.

In the worst case, merge sort does about 39% fewer comparisons than quicksort does in the average case; merge sort always makes fewer comparisons than quicksort, except in extremely rare cases, when they tie, where merge sort's worst case is found simultaneously with quicksort's best case. In terms of moves, merge sort's worst case complexity is O(n log n)—the same complexity as quicksort's best case, and merge sort's best case takes about half as many iterations as the worst case.

Recursive implementations of merge sort make 2n - 1 method calls in the worst case, compared to quicksort's n, thus has roughly twice as much recursive overhead as quicksort. However, iterative, non-recursive, implementations of merge sort, avoiding method call overhead, are not difficult to code. Merge sort's most common implementation does not sort in place, therefore, the memory size of the input must be allocated for the sorted output to be stored in. Sorting in-place is possible but requires an extremely complicated implementation and hurts performance.

Merge sort is much more efficient than quicksort if the data to be sorted can only be efficiently accessed sequentially, and is thus popular in languages such as Lisp, where sequentially accessed data structures are very common. Unlike some (inefficient) implementations of quicksort, merge sort is a stable sort as long as the merge operation is implemented properly.

Merge sorting tape drives

Merge sort is so inherently sequential that it's practical to run it using slow tape drives as input and output devices. It requires very little memory, and the memory required does not change with the number of data elements. If you have four tape drives, it works as follows:

divide the data to be sorted in half and put half on each of two tapes
merge individual pairs of records from the two tapes; write two-record chunks alternately to each of the two output tapes
merge the two-record chunks from the two output tapes into four-record chunks; write these alternately to the original two input tapes
merge the four-record chunks into eight-record chunks; write these alternately to the original two output tapes
repeat until you have one chunk containing all the data, sorted --- that is, for log n passes, where n is the number of records.

For the same reason it is also very useful for sorting data on disk that is too large to fit entirely into primary memory. On tape drives that can run both backwards and forwards, you can run merge passes in both directions, avoiding rewind time.

Optimizing merge sort

This might seem to be of historical interest only, but on modern computers, locality of reference is of paramount importance in software optimization, because multi-level memory hierarchies are used. In some sense, main RAM can be seen as a fast tape drive, level 3 cache memory as a slightly faster one, level 2 cache memory as faster still, and so on. In some circumstances, cache reloading might impose unacceptable overhead and a carefully crafted merge sort might result in a significant improvement in running time. This opportunity might change if fast memory becomes very cheap again, or if exotic architectures like the Tera MTA become commonplace.

Designing a merge sort to perform optimally often requires adjustment to available hardware, eg. number of tape drives, or size and speed of the relevant cache memory levels.

Comparison with other sort algorithms

Although heapsort has the same time bounds as merge sort, it requires only Ω(1) auxiliary space instead of merge sort's Ω(n), and is consequently often faster in practical implementations. Quicksort, however, is considered by many to be the fastest general-purpose sort algorithm in practice. Its average-case complexity is O(n log n), with a much smaller coefficient, in good implementations, than merge sort's, even though it is quadratic in the worst case. On the plus side, merge sort is a stable sort, parallelizes better, and is more efficient at handling slow-to-access sequential media. Merge sort is often the best choice for sorting a linked list: in this situation it is relatively easy to implement a merge sort in such a way that it does not require Ω(n) auxiliary space (instead only Ω(1)), and the slow random-access performance of a linked list makes some other algorithms (such as quick sort) perform poorly, and others (such as heapsort) completely impossible.

As of Perl 5.8, merge sort is its default sorting algorithm (it was quicksort in previous versions of Perl). In Java, the Arrays.sort() methods use mergesort and a tuned quicksort depending on the datatypes.

Utility in online sorting

Mergesort's merge operation is useful in online sorting, where the list to be sorted is received a piece at a time, instead of all at the beginning (see online algorithm). In this application, we sort each new piece that is received using any sorting algorithm, and then merge it into our sorted list so far using the merge operation. However, this approach can be expensive in time and space if the received pieces are small compared to the sorted list — a better approach in this case is to store the list in a self-balancing binary search tree and add elements to it as they are received.

References

Donald Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching, Second Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1998. ISBN 0-201-89685-0. Section 5.2.4: Sorting by Merging, pp.158–168.
Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition. MIT Press and McGraw-Hill, 2001. ISBN 0262032937. Section 2.3: Designing algorithms, pp.27–37.

External links

Sort algorithms | Comparison sorts | Stable sorts

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