Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

19.1 Introduction

Searching data involves determining whether a value (referred to as the search key) is present in the data and, if so, finding its location. Two popular search algorithms are the simple linear search and the faster but more complex binary search. Sorting places data in ascending or descending order, based on one or more sort keys. A list of names could be sorted alphabetically, bank accounts could be sorted by account number, employee payroll records could be sorted by social security number, and so on. This chapter introduces two simple sorting algorithms, the selection sort and the insertion sort, along with the more efficient but more complex merge sort. Figure 19.1 summarizes the searching and sorting algorithms discussed ...