Description
1 Introduction
Sorting is a well investigated problem in Computer Science and many different algorithms have been developed for
accomplishing this task. There are simple algorithms with runtimes in O(n
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) and specialized algorithms which make
restrictive assumptions on data to obtain O(n) runtime performance. In this assignment, you will implement and
compare the performance of two common sorting algorithms.
For this assignment you may optionally work in groups of two. Partnerships must rotate – you may not use the
same partner as a previous assignment (i.e. written 2). If you work in a group of 2, both student’s are responsible
for ensuring that both partners completely understand the code and C-constructs used. Every file should begin with a
block comment indicating who the partners are (names and UCSC accounts) and any outside help received on that part
of the program. These block comments should indicate the “history” of the file: who originally wrote the file, and who
has since modified it. This is important for academic honesty when partners rotate and some implementors/modifiers
are not in the current partnership. Significant outside help must also be acknowledged in the README file. Only one
partner should submit the zip file described below, the other partner should watch the submission to ensure it is done
correctly and on time. The partner not submitting the program should instead just submit a copy of the partnership’s
README file (not zip’ed).
The three goals of this assignment are:
• Use the heap data structure to implement a priority queue and heap sort in the C language.
• Compare the running times of these algorithms.
• Improve your C programming and ADT skills.
2 Assignment Description
Your are to implement heap sort (with a priority queue ADT) and insertion sort. These method should sort a group
of integer keys stored in an array (there may be duplicates) from smallest to largest. You will then need to test your
algorithms to make sure they work correctly. Finally you will need to run experiments to compare the performance of
these algorithms.
Most applications would have other information associated with the keys that is of interest. For example, one
might want to sort a bunch of name-salary pairs by salary to see which names earn the top salaries. However, for this
assignment we will just be sorting the keys (salaries).
Details on implementation are as follows.
• Your insertionSort.h file should contain the following prototype: void insertionSort(int keys[],
int numKeys); that is implemented in file insertionSort.c. This function should sort the numKeys
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integers in the array keys.
One way to do this is with the array-based insertion sort algorithm in the text.
A different way is to use your linked list ADT and insert the keys in the array one-at-a-time into a sorted linked
list. Then copy over the sequence of keys (e.g. by repeatedly putting the first element on the list into the next
slot in the array, and then deleting the first element). Of course, if insertionSort.c uses your linked list
module, it will include list.h and you must submit list.h and list.c with this program. Note that
regular C passes arrays by address, so changes made to the array will be seen by the caller.
• Your heap.c and heap.h files should implement the heap ADT. The following description is for a maxheap, you may implement either a max-heap or a min-heap. Your heap.h file should declare the handle type
heapHndl (probably a pointer to a struct1
containing an interger max-size, an integer current-size, and a pointer
to an array of integers) and the prototypes
– heapHndl newHeap (int maxSize);
– Boolean isFull(heapHndl H);2
,
– Boolean isEmpty(heapHndl H);3
,
– int maxValue(heapHndl H);
– void deleteMax(heapHndl H);
– void insert(heapHndl H, int priority);
and optionally heapHndl buildHeap (int maxSize, int[] data, int numData);.
Note that both newHeap and buildHeap create new heaps, but the heap created by newHeap starts empty
while the heap created by buildHeap it is initialized to contain the numData priority values stored in the
data array. These functions should all be implemented in your heap.c file. As you implement these functions, create and extend a heapDriver.c program to test them out. In this assignment, you are responsible
for clearly stating the pre- and post-conditions of the ADT operations.
• Your heapSort.h file should contain the prototype void heapSort(int keys[], int numKeys);
that is implemented in file heapSort.c. As with your insertion sort routine, the array keys is used both to
pass in the unsorted keys and to pass the keys back in sorted order (i.e. the caller will see that the keys in their
array are now in sorted order). I expect you to implement heapSort using the heap ADT along the lines indicated
in the heapSort with ADT’s handout.
• sortPrint.c will contain a main program to test your sorting algorithms. In a sense, it is the driver program
for the insertionSort and heapSort modules. sortPrint.c should take a file name as a command line argument.
This file should have one integer per line. The first line indicates how many keys are in the file, and each other
line contains a single key. sortPrint should read the file and create one copy of the keys for each sorting
algorithm (stored into an array for that algorithm). For each sorting algorithm, sortPrint should call the
algorithm on the appropriate array to get the keys in sorted order. sortPrint should verify that the keys are
sorted (by comparing each A[i] with A[i+1]) and print each sorting of the keys (labeled by sorting algorithm)
to the standard output. You may choose your output format, but is should be self-documenting and easy to
read/check.
• sortComp.c contains a second main program which will be used to compare runtime performance. Like
sortPrint.c this program should take an input file name as a command line argument and create an array of keys for each sorting method to sort. However, rather then printing the results and testing correctness,
sortComp.c should get timing information as described below and print the input size (number of keys) and
how much CPU time each algorithm took in a readable format to standard output.
1For information hiding, the struct should be declared in the heap.c file.
2You may have isFull return an int with 0 being false and 1 being true rather than a boolean. You may restrict your heaps to hold only
maxSize elements, and don’t need to implement the “array doubling” technique briefly discussed in class, and fail an assertion if the client tries to
insert too many keys into the heap.
3As with isFull(), you may have isEmpty return an int.
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Measuring the time
We will measure the amount of time taken by a sorting algorithm using the clock() function. To use this function, the
sortComp.c file must include time.h. The time.h file exports the clock t type, a clock() function that
returns the current number of ”clock ticks”, and a CLOCKS PER SEC conversion factor that will let convert clock
ticks into CPU seconds. The following outline shows how they are used.
#include /* printf */
#include /* clock_t, clock, CLOCKS_PER_SEC */
int main ()
{
clock_t startTime, duration;
// read your data and initialize array of unsorted keys
startTime = clock();
// run the sorting algorithm
duration = clock() – startTime;
printf (“sorting algorithm took %f seconds.\n”, ((float) duration ) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
return 0;
}
System call clock() returns the number of ’ticks’ (see the Wikipedia entry for “jiffy”) used by your program’s
process. Since the frequency of ticks depends on the particular system you are running on (there could be 1000000
ticks per sec), a CLOCKS PER SEC constant is provided to convert a number of ticks into seconds. The calculated
runtime is likely vary with different inputs, and might even fluctuate due to the other activity on your system. Therefore
it is advisable to measure the run time several times with different input files and take the average of the various time
values obtained.
Experimental procedure
You will need data of required size to perform your experiments. One good way to obtain this data is from the web
site ’https://www.random.org’. You can use statistical packages like R or even use random number generators in c, or
java to generate random data. Measure the performance for input files with 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 integers
to be sorted. You should run your sortComp experiment at least three times for each input size with different input
files. You can add in more sizes if you would like to get a clearer picture. Then comment on the observations in the
README file for your submission. Which of the algorithms is more efficient according to your data?
3 Submittal Information
You will need to submit the .c files, .h files, a single makefile that compiles the code and creates the three programs
(sortComp, sortPrint, and heapDriver), and a README file which describes the contents and purpose of
all files. You will need to make sure that the programs compile and run correctly on the UCSC unix systems. You
will lose points for compile issues, and should not expect that graders will take much time trying to fix them. If the
program does not compile, graders may choose to grade the code on non-execution aspects and this will significantly
cost your grade.
You will be submitting the following 11 files: insertionSort.c, insertionSort.h, heapSort.c,
heapSort.h, heap.c, heap.h, heapDriver.c, sortPrint.c, sortComp.c, makefile and a README.
If you use your list ADT (or any other modules) also submit the module’s .c and ,.h files. zip all the files together
into a file called lastNameFirstInitialProg2.zip and then submit this zip file through ecommons.
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3.1 Grading Guide
15 points total:
• 1 point for correct submission with all files (including the driver program) and a README file.
• 1 point for separate ADT Files with information hiding, good comments (including pre and post conditions) and
modularity.
• 1 point for well organized, readable code and generally good style,
• 1 point for a good, self-contained makefile (i.e. not using 12b scripts that the grader may not have access to)
• 1 point for memory management: free-ing the arrays and structs you malloc or calloc.
• 2 point for correct insertion sorting.
• 4 points for correct heap sorting
• 4 points for proper experimentation and documentation of results in the README file
3.2 Hints
There is a lot to do in this assignment so try to get started early.
Visualize the program top-down to understand what needs to be done, but implement bottom-up, checking that
each small part of the implementation is working well before moving on to the next small chunk.
If C is giving you trouble, you might find it easier to debug your algorithms in another language (e.g. Java) and
then translate your code to C.
Implement a simple printHeap() function that prints the state of the heap so your driver can print the state of
the heap and you can ensure your heap ADT is working correctly.
Although the insertionSort and heapSort functions take in an array of keys and return the sorted keys in the same
array, they can be implemented by copying the keys (into a heap or inserting into a list) and then re-writing the keys
in sorted order back into the array.
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