🚀 go-pugleaf

In <2033@ethz.UUCP>, Michael Rys writes:

>In 1987 a guy called Carlson (I think) improved the Heapsort-Algorithm
>by using a binary search for inserting into the sorted list. In this
>way Heapsort is always faster than Quicksort for very larg n.

It is interesting that it took until 1987 for somebody to make that
improvement. I was watching a demonstration program for QuickBasic
on the Macintosh that compares the various methods. The one they called
a heap sort used a linear search to insert. I thought there was a mistake or
bug, because a binary search would have been so much faster. But maybe it
took a graphical display to make it obvious. Anybody who wants to see an
entertaining graphical comparison of search algorithms should find a friend
who has QuickBasic for their Mac. It is even in color on a Mac II.

--Lyle D. Gunderson   zebolskyd@yvax.byu.edu