Quicksort with Python

user2687481 picture user2687481 · Aug 15, 2013 · Viewed 199.2k times · Source

I am totally new to python and I am trying to implement quicksort in it. Could someone please help me complete my code?

I do not know how to concatenate the three arrays and printing them.

def sort(array=[12,4,5,6,7,3,1,15]):
    less = []
    equal = []
    greater = []

    if len(array) > 1:
        pivot = array[0]
        for x in array:
            if x < pivot:
                less.append(x)
            if x == pivot:
                equal.append(x)
            if x > pivot:
                greater.append(x)
            sort(less)
            sort(pivot)
            sort(greater)

Answer

Brionius picture Brionius · Aug 15, 2013
def sort(array=[12,4,5,6,7,3,1,15]):
    """Sort the array by using quicksort."""

    less = []
    equal = []
    greater = []

    if len(array) > 1:
        pivot = array[0]
        for x in array:
            if x < pivot:
                less.append(x)
            elif x == pivot:
                equal.append(x)
            elif x > pivot:
                greater.append(x)
        # Don't forget to return something!
        return sort(less)+equal+sort(greater)  # Just use the + operator to join lists
    # Note that you want equal ^^^^^ not pivot
    else:  # You need to handle the part at the end of the recursion - when you only have one element in your array, just return the array.
        return array