Bubble Sort Algorithm

Sorting is nothing but arranging the data in ascending or descending order. The     term sorting came into picture, as humans realised the importance of searching quickly.

There are so many things in our real life that we need to search for, like a particular record in  database, roll numbers in merit list, a particular telephone number in telephone directory, a particular page in a book etc. All this would have been a mess if the data was kept unordered and unsorted, but fortunately the concept of sorting came into existence, making it easier for everyone to arrange data in an order, hence making it easier to search.

Sorting arranges data in a sequence which makes searching easier.

 

Bubble Sort is a simple algorithm which is used to sort a given set of n elements provided in form of an array with n number of elements.

Bubble Sort compares all the element one by one and sort them based on their values.   If the given array has to be sorted in ascending order, then bubble sort will start by  comparing the first element of the array with the second element, if the first element is greater  than the second element, it will swap both the elements, and then move on to compare the second and the third element, and so on.

If we have total n elements, then we need to repeat this process for n-1 times.

 Step by Step Process

  The bubble sort algorithm is performed using the following steps...

1.  Starting with the first element(index = 0), compare the current element with the next element of the array.

2.  If the current element is greater than the next element of the array, swap them.

3.  If the current element is less than the next element, move to the next element. Repeat Step 1.

 

 Bubble Sort Logic

 

for(i = 0; i < n; i++)

 {
        for(j = 0; j < n-i-1; j++)
        {
            if( arr[j] > arr[j+1])
            {
                // swap the elements
                temp = arr[j];
                arr[j] = arr[j+1];
                arr[j+1] = temp;
            }
        }
    } 

  Let's consider an array with values {5, 1, 6, 2, 4, 3}


 

   Implementation of Bubble Sort Algorithm using C Programming Language

 

  #include <stdio.h>
  void bubbleSort(int arr[], int n)
  {
    int i, j, temp;
    for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        for(j = 0; j < n-i-1; j++)
        {
            if( arr[j] > arr[j+1])
            {
                // swap the elements
                temp = arr[j];
                arr[j] = arr[j+1];
                arr[j+1] = temp;
            }
        }
     }
    
    // print the sorted array
    printf("Sorted Array: ");
    for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        printf("%d  ", arr[i]);
    }
 }

  int main()
  {
    int arr[100], i, n, step, temp;
    printf("Enter the number of elements to be sorted: ");
    scanf("%d", &n);
    for(i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        printf("Enter element no. %d: ", i+1);
        scanf("%d", &arr[i]);
    }
    // call the function bubbleSort
    bubbleSort(arr, n);
    
    return 0;
 }

 Output