Abstract
Batcher’s Baffler — so named by David Gries — is a sorting algortihm that is of interest because many of its “comparison-swaps” can be executed concurrently. It is also of interest because it used to be hard to explain.
This note explains Batcher’s Baffler by designing it. Besides including all heuristics, it has two distinguishing features, both contributing to its clarity and brevity:
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the (little) theory the algorithm relies upon is dealt with in isolation;
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by suitable abstractions, all case analyses have been removed from the argument. (End of Abstract.)
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© 1987 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Dijkstra, E.W. (1987). A heuristic explanation of Batcher’s Baffler. In: Broy, M. (eds) Logic of Programming and Calculi of Discrete Design. NATO ASI Series, vol 36. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-87374-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-87374-4_2
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