Book Image

Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Kotlin

By : Chandra Sekhar Nayak, Rivu Chakraborty
Book Image

Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Kotlin

By: Chandra Sekhar Nayak, Rivu Chakraborty

Overview of this book

Data structures and algorithms are more than just theoretical concepts. They help you become familiar with computational methods for solving problems and writing logical code. Equipped with this knowledge, you can write efficient programs that run faster and use less memory. Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Kotlin book starts with the basics of algorithms and data structures, helping you get to grips with the fundamentals and measure complexity. You'll then move on to exploring the basics of functional programming while getting used to thinking recursively. Packed with plenty of examples along the way, this book will help you grasp each concept easily. In addition to this, you'll get a clear understanding of how the data structures in Kotlin's collection framework work internally. By the end of this book, you will be able to apply the theory of data structures and algorithms to work out real-world problems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Data Structures
4
Section 2: Efficient Grouping of Data with Various Data Structures
8
Section 3: Algorithms and Efficiency
11
Section 4: Modern and Advanced Data Structures
15
Assessments

Understanding merge sort

Merge sort is one of the fastest sorting algorithms, and is used widely by many programmers. It sorts the elements using a divide and conquer algorithm. This makes it even faster for sorting huge datasets with the help of multiple machines simultaneously. The complexity of merge sort is O(n log n), which is considered to be the shortest possible time required for sorting n number of elements.

How the merge sort algorithm works

As we already know that it works using he divide and conquer principle, let's understand how it really divides the input to do the job. It sorts any input list as follows:

  1. It divides the input list (unsorted) into two sublists from the middle index. Now the algorithm has...