Natural Merge Sort
A natural merge sort is similar to a bottom up merge sort except that any naturally occurring runs (sorted sequences) in the input are exploited. In the bottom up merge sort, the starting point assumes each run is one item long. In practice, random input data will have many short runs that just happen to be sorted. In the typical case, the natural merge sort may not need as many passes because there are fewer runs to merge. For example, in the best case, the input is already sorted (i.e., is one run), so the natural merge sort need only make one pass through the data.
Read more about this topic: Merge Sort
Famous quotes containing the words natural, merge and/or sort:
“Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“English people ... are very kind, very friendly, interested in a general way, and consider us a great, wonderful, unknown sort of Australia, and that is all.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)