Talk:Sorting algorithms/Merge sort
Merge Sort can be an iterative sort
The merge sort is NOT a recursive sort through necessity (unlike the quick sort) but through implementation. An alternative algorithm for the merge sort looks like this:
n=1 Repeat Merge lists of size n Double n Until n >= Size
This is a purely iterative process. Starfiend 14:20, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Java implementation
I don't know if you want functions tuned towards efficiency (rather than code readability), but the java implementation accesses a linked list through an index, which a big performance hit in any language. A much faster implementation (50x faster on a list of 100,000 elements) would be to use an iterator:
int i = 0; for (E d : m) if (i++ < middle) left.add(d); else right.add(d);
--Zastrowm 17:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)