bubble sort (redirected from Odd even sort)

A sorting technique that is typically used for sequencing small lists. It starts by comparing the first item to the second, the second to the third and so on until it finds one item out of order. It then swaps the two items and starts over. The sort may alternate from the top of the list to the bottom and then from the bottom to the top. The name comes from the notion that items are raised or "bubbled up" to the top. See counting sort, quick sort and selection sort.

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bubble sort - A sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries "bubble upward" in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by naive and untutored programmers, hackers consider it the canonical example of a naive algorithm. The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm is bogo-sort. A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or willful perversity.