[Computer Science Department Home Page]

[Java Sorting Animation Main page]

Instructions :

• Using these pages you can have RACING SORTERS ( :) ) that allow you to see on one applet how the different sorting techniques behave with different data sets. You can select up to 4 (four) sorting algorithms in the applet below. You can also enter your own input, or random input or you may set standard input and retrive it as in the sorting pages with user input. The SAME data set will be used by all your selected sorters, as a result of this you can obtain a relative idea of the efficiency of each algorithm.

  As of 6/15/97, this Applet has been updated to include Heap Sort as one of the possible choices.

• Choose up to 4 (four) sorting algorithms by clicking on an item in the choice list at the top of the applet. Clicking on any item already selected deselects it. At any point in time, you should have at most 4 (four) items selected. Your choices will be immediately reflected in the four canvases below.
• You may enter your own input, choose random input or set and retrive standard input. Refer Main Sorting Page to access the sort pages with user input - instructions on how to enter your own input etc. are available in those pages. Note : In this applet, input sizes can be up to 25 (twenty-five).
• The control panel at the bottom now controls the entire set of up to 4 (four) sorters. You will see all of them move forwards, backwards, fast, slow, etc. in response to one mouse click.

  Note 1 : Providing the ability to go backwards over the sorting already done is primarily intended as an educational tool for students learning the details of the algorithm, and may be of limited use for this applet.

  Note 2 : Using a browser on a machine that is relatively slow (e.g., a SPARC-5 70 MHz machine running Solaris 2.5.1 that we used) it is advisable to run the sorters in "Slow" mode and then adjust the speed to make it as fast as you want it. The reason for this is that when we ran the applet in "Fast" (">>") mode on this machine, the sorting was so fast that the display could not keep up with it and we did not see the iterations continuously, one after the other, but in increments of something like 4, which was not very appealing. Your own experience (on your own machine) may be different though!

• WARNING !! : This applet does not display well on Mac systems. We used Netscape 3.0 and found its Java system wanting. Even on a 100 MHz machine the display was messed up and the sorting was VERY slow.

Applet

A version of this applet in which you can control the INDIVIDUAL sorters

This page has been developed by Sandeep Mitra (smitra@cs.brockport.edu)

[Computer Science Department Home Page] [Java Sorting Animation Main page]

Last change : June 15, 1997 / smitra@cs.brockport.edu