Searching and Sorting Arrays

Chapter 8

Searching an Array for a Specific Item

Sequential search (or linear search):

• Searching a list for a given item, starting from the first array element

• Compare each element in the array with the value being searched for

• Continue the search until the item is found or no more data is left in the list.

Sorting an Array

Selection sort is one algorithm that orders a list by moving unsorted values to their proper position.

Steps:

1. Find the smallest element in the unsorted portion of the list.
2. Swap it with the top value in the unsorted portion of the array.
3. Start again with the rest of the list.

Example of sorting using the steps described above with the example array int list[8] { 37, 38, 62, 53, 14, 30, 19, 37 };