Researching Searching Algorithms?

NiN3x asks: "I have recently written a sorting algorithm that can be close to four times as fast as quicksort and never much slower. I was wondering if there are lots of sorting algorithms like this out there. I don't think I could be the only one that has thought of something like this. I am only in my second year of computer science, so I don't know a lot about these things. I have tried searching the net and can't find anything. My algorithm is NOT an inplace sorting algorithm. Can anyone point me to some sources for this type of thing?"

Comments

Proper Analysis is Key

[photon317]

There are lots of algorithms out there that seem to be multiples faster than quicksort in daily use. The problem is when you formally analyze them, you find out their not gauranteed to be faster, and could in fact be horribly slower. If you run it enough times against various wierd data, you'll probably hit one of these slow runs yourself. I can only guess because you haven't mentioned anything about the algorithm or shown any sample code. Read up on how to analyze your code for O() notation and figure out what the real worst case is mathematically.