// Returns the sorted vector after performing SlowSort // It is a sorting algorithm that is of humorous nature and not useful. // It's based on the principle of multiply and surrender, a tongue-in-cheek joke // of divide and conquer. It was published in 1986 by Andrei Broder and Jorge // Stolfi in their paper Pessimal Algorithms and Simplexity Analysis. This // algorithm multiplies a single problem into multiple subproblems It is // interesting because it is provably the least efficient sorting algorithm that // can be built asymptotically, and with the restriction that such an algorithm, // while being slow, must still all the time be working towards a result. #include void SlowSort(int a[], int i, int j) { if (i >= j) return; int m = i + (j - i) / 2; // midpoint, implemented this way to avoid // overflow int temp; SlowSort(a, i, m); SlowSort(a, m + 1, j); if (a[j] < a[m]) { temp = a[j]; // swapping a[j] & a[m] a[j] = a[m]; a[m] = temp; } SlowSort(a, i, j - 1); } // Sample Main function int main() { int size; std::cout << "\nEnter the number of elements : "; std::cin >> size; int *arr = new int[size]; std::cout << "\nEnter the unsorted elements : "; for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i) { std::cout << "\n"; std::cin >> arr[i]; } SlowSort(arr, 0, size); std::cout << "Sorted array\n"; for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i) { std::cout << arr[i] << " "; } delete[] arr; return 0; }