Interview Camp 

Implementation: Quick Sort 

 
Quick sort is the most common sorting algorithm in the industry. If you look at most 
in-built sort functions (e.g, the unix sort() function), they will most likely use quick sort. 
 
You should know how to implement it. It is rare to ask to code Quick Sort. 
However, you can be asked details about how it works, its time/space complexities, 
pseudocode, etc.   
 
Also, You should know how to code the ​Dutch National Flag (DNF)​ problem. Once you know that, quick 
sort is pretty trivial to implement.  
 
In DNF, we put all the elements equal to the pivot in the middle. There is a common implementation 
where you put only the pivot in the middle. While that has the same worse case time complexity, 
it does worse when there are a lot of duplicates in the array. Try it out yourself. 
/*
* Returns the border points of the middle section
*
* [0,0,0,1,1,1,2,2,2]
* ^ ^
*/
public static Pair<Integer> dutchNationalFlag(int[] a, int start, int end, int
pivotIndex) {
int pivot = a[pivotIndex];
int low = start - 1, mid = start - 1, high = end + 1;

while (mid + 1 < high) {

if (a[mid + 1] > pivot) {
Utils.swap(a, high - 1, mid + 1);
high--;
} else if (a[mid + 1] == pivot) {
mid++;
} else {
Utils.swap(a, mid + 1, low + 1);
mid++;
low++;
}
}

return new Pair<Integer>(low, high);

}

public static void quickSort(int[] a, int start, int end) {

if (start < 0 || end >= a.length || start >= end)
return;

int pivot = start + (new Random().nextInt(end - start + 1));

 
 
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Pair<Integer> points = dutchNationalFlag(a, start, end, pivot);

quickSort(a, start, points.getFirst());
quickSort(a, points.getSecond(), end);
}

public static int[] quickSort(int[] a) {

if (a == null)
return a;

quickSort(a, 0, a.length - 1);

return a;
}
 

 
 
© ​2017 Interview Camp (interviewcamp.io)