Merge Sort Algorithm

Merge sort is a highly effective way to sort data. In many cases, it maintains the order of equal elements from the input to the output, making it what’s called a stable sort. Merge sort is a divide-and-conquer algorithm that was invented by John von Neumann, at the end of World War II.

Algorithm

A merge sort algorithm works like this:

1. Divide the unsorted list in smaller sublists, each containing one element (a list of one element is considered sorted);
2. Repeatedly merge sublists to produce new sorted sublists until there is only one sublist remaining.

There are two implementations of this algorithm, one is top-down, i.e recursive, and the other is bottom-up, i.e iterative. But I will only show you the recursive one, as it is the most common and easier to understand.

Pseudocode

This algorithm recursively divides the input list into smaller sublists until the sublists are trivially sorted, and then merges the sublists while sorting them. The pseudocode is available below:

function merge_sort(list m) is
    // Base case. A list of zero or one
    // elements is sorted, by definition.
    if length of m ≤ 1 then
        return m

    // Recursive case. First, divide the
    // list into equal-sized sublists
    // consisting of the first half
    // and second half of the list.
    // This assumes lists start at index 0.
    var left := empty list
    var right := empty list
    for each x with index i in m do
        if i < (length of m)/2 then
            add x to left
        else
            add x to right

    // Recursively sort both sublists.
    left := merge_sort(left)
    right := merge_sort(right)

    // Then merge the now-sorted sublists.
    return merge(left, right)

function merge(left, right) is
    var result := empty list

    while left is not empty and right is not empty do
        if first(left) ≤ first(right) then
            append first(left) to result
            left := rest(left)
        else
            append first(right) to result
            right := rest(right)

    // Either left or right may have elements left; consume them.
    // (Only one of the following loops will actually be entered.)
    while left is not empty do
        append first(left) to result
        left := rest(left)
    while right is not empty do
        append first(right) to result
        right := rest(right)
    return result

Visualization

The video below showcases the merge sort algorithm in a random array of 50 elements.

Implementation

Python

Copy

def merge(left, right):
    result = []

    while len(left) != 0 and len(right) != 0:
        if left[0] <= right[0]:
            result.append(left[0])
            left = left[1:]
        else:
            result.append(right[0])
            right = right[1:]

    while len(left) != 0:
        result.append(left[0])
        left = left[1:]

    while len(right) != 0:
        result.append(right[0])
        right = right[1:]

    return result


def merge_sort(array):
    if len(array) <= 1:
        return array

    left = []
    right = []

    for i, x in enumerate(array):
        if i < len(array) / 2:
            left.append(x)
        else:
            right.append(x)

    left = merge_sort(left)
    right = merge_sort(right)

    return merge(left, right)


j = [38, 27, 43, 3, 9, 82, 10]

print(merge_sort(j))

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André Albano @onablaerdna
I'm a Geophysicist and Coder. I work with seismic inversion algorithms, software development, well log analysis and so on.