Bubble Sort

What is a Bubble Sort?

Bubble sort which gets it's name from the way elements 'bubble' up to their position is one of the first sorting algorithms that a lot of people learn, this is due to it's simple implementation. However, it is very rarely the best sort for the job. For each pass the bubble sort iterates through each element in the collection, swapping adjacent elements if they are out of order. The bubble sort can be improved by making it not check the already sorted elements (The length of the collection - the number of passes done), also by making it that if a pass completes without any swaps taking place then the sort ends as the elements must be sorted.
Bubble sort has a big O complexity of O(n2)

Pros: Cons:
  • Simple to implement
  • Performs well if the data set is nearly sorted
  • Inefficient

Code Snippet

Java code for bubble sort

Animation

Animation for bubble sort

Animation taken from: https://www.cs.usfca.edu/~galles/visualization/ComparisonSort.html