CS288 Intensive Programming Homework

Homework 6 on comparsion of sorting

• Write a C program to implement and compare four sorting functions: selection(slowest but simple), merge (moderate), integer radix and float radix sort (fast but simple). Use the skeleton code. You may change the skeleton code but try not to change the structure.
• Run the program and compare their execution time and memory space required. Use the problem size starting n=10,100,1000,10000,...,100 mil depending on your memory size. If selection sort takes too long, you can stop selection at n = 1 mil but continue for merge and radix.
• Measure the execution times in secs and miliseconds.
• (Optional but encouraged to try for your own sake which you can use later to demonstrate the efficiency of the three sorters) Plot a graph and compare the performance of the three algorithms (selection, merge, int radix). Leave out float radix sort. The x-axis will be problem size 10...100 mil while the y-axis will be execution time. The plot will have three lines.

  Plotting is a separate process, not part of the C code. Your C program will print numbers each time the code is run with different problem sizes. Save the numbers as a csv file. Use excel or something to manually plot graphs/charts.