A Variant of Modified Diminishing Increment Sorting: Circlesort and its Performance Comparison with some Established Sorting Algorithms

Abstract

The essence of the plethora of sorting algorithms available is to have varieties that suit different characteristics of data to be sorted. In addition, the real goal is to have a sorting algorithm that is both efficient and easy to implement. Towards achieving this goal, Shellsort improved on Insertion sort, and various sequences have been proposed to further improve the performance of Shellsort. The best of all the improvements on Shellsort in the worst case is the Modified Diminishing Increment Sorting (MDIS). This article presents Circlesort, a variant of MDIS. The results of the implementation and experimentation of the algorithm with MDIS and some notable sorting algorithms showed that it performed better than the established algorithms considered in the best case and worst case scenarios, but second to MDIS. The results of the performance comparison of the algorithms considered also show their strengths and weaknesses in different scenarios. This will guide prospective users as to the choice to be made depending on the nature of the list to be sorted.