Re: Function to find the greatest or smallest value

[Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

CRPence wrote:
> ...
>    Just curious.  Why would a sort be more efficient than spinning 
> the array in the /for loop/ as above?  Does the sort not require 
> effectively all the same work?  Would a sort be more efficient than 
> the following [just for its removal of the @max function] as well?:

The sort would be way _less_ efficient; each element would be checked 
many times during the sort instead of the one time during the simple loop.

A single pass through the array is order(n).  RPG's SORTA opcode uses 
Shell sort which is order(n (log n)**2).

By the way, here's my favourite live-action sort algorithm site.
http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/

The simple loop searching for the maximum and/or minimum values would be 
equivalent to the first pass of the selection sort.