Merge Sort

The main idea of merge sort is:

1. Divide array into two halves
2. Recursively sort each half

3. Merge two half

   The purpose of Merge operation is “Given two sorted sub arrays a[lo] to a[mid] and a[mid+1] to a[hi], replace the sorted subarray a[lo] to a[hi]”

So The Merger Operation is as following:

public static void merge(int[] a, int[] aux, int lo, int mid, int hi){
        // a[lo ... mid] and a[mid ... hi] have been sorted
        for(int k=lo;k<=hi;k++){
            aux[k] = a[k];  //copy all the element in a to array-aux
        }

        int i = lo;
        int j = mid+1;
        // i scans the first array, j scans the second; k scans the whole
        for(int k=lo;k<=hi;k++){
            if(i>mid) a[k] = aux[j++];
            else if(j>hi) a[k] = aux[i++];
            else if(aux[j]<aux[i]) a[k] = aux[j++];
            else a[k] = aux[i++];
        }

    }

The Sort Operation is :

// This is easy to understand, sort the first half, afterwards sort the second half. At last, merge them together
public void sort(int[] a, int[] aux, int lo, int hi){
        if(hi <= lo) return;
        int mid =lo + (hi - lo) / 2;
        sort(a,aux,lo,mid);
        sort(a,aux,mid+1,hi); 
        merge(a,aux,lo,mid,hi);
    }

Test case:

public class sort {

    public static void main(String[] args){
        int[] a = {1,9,5,7,3,0,6,2,4,13,16,15};
        int[] aux = new int[a.length];
        merge m = new merge();
        m.sort(a,aux,0,a.length-1);

        for(int i=0;i<a.length; i++){
        System.out.print(a[i]+" ");
    }
    }
// result: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 13 15 16

}