
Sorting Algorithm

This is a sorting algorithm.   It may be applied to a set of data in order to sort it.    
For comparing various sorts, see compare sorts.  
For other sorting algorithms,   see sorting algorithms,   or:

O(n logn) sorts
Heap sort |
Merge sort |
Patience sort |
Quick sort
O(n log2n) sorts
Shell Sort
O(n2) sorts
Bubble sort |
Cocktail sort |
Cocktail sort with shifting bounds |
Comb sort |
Cycle sort |
Gnome sort |
Insertion sort |
Selection sort |
Strand sort
other sorts
Bead sort |
Bogo sort |
Common sorted list |
Composite structures sort |
Custom comparator sort |
Counting sort |
Disjoint sublist sort |
External sort |
Jort sort |
Lexicographical sort |
Natural sorting |
Order by pair comparisons |
Order disjoint list items |
Order two numerical lists |
Object identifier (OID) sort |
Pancake sort |
Quickselect |
Permutation sort |
Radix sort |
Ranking methods |
Remove duplicate elements |
Sleep sort |
Stooge sort |
[Sort letters of a string] |
Three variable sort |
Topological sort |
Tree sort


Task

Bogosort a list of numbers.



Bogosort simply shuffles a collection randomly until it is sorted.

"Bogosort" is a perversely inefficient algorithm only used as an in-joke.

Its average run-time is   O(n!)   because the chance that any given shuffle of a set will end up in sorted order is about one in   n   factorial,   and the worst case is infinite since there's no guarantee that a random shuffling will ever produce a sorted sequence.

Its best case is   O(n)   since a single pass through the elements may suffice to order them.



Pseudocode:

while not InOrder(list) do
   Shuffle(list)
done



The Knuth shuffle may be used to implement the shuffle part of this algorithm.




function shuffle ($a) { 
    $c = $a.Clone()  # make copy to avoid clobbering $a
    1..($c.Length - 1) | ForEach-Object {
        $i = Get-Random -Minimum $_ -Maximum $c.Length
        $c[$_-1],$c[$i] = $c[$i],$c[$_-1]
        $c[$_-1]  # return newly-shuffled value
    }
    $c[-1]  # last value
}
 
function isSorted( [Array] $data )
{
	$sorted = $true
	for( $i = 1; ( $i -lt $data.length ) -and $sorted; $i++ )
	{
		$sorted = $data[ $i - 1 ] -le $data[ $i ]
	}
	$sorted
}
 
function BogoSort ( [Array] $indata ) {
	$data = $indata.Clone()
	while( -not ( isSorted $data ) ) {
		$data = shuffle $indata
	}
	$data
}
 
$l = 7; BogoSort ( 1..$l | ForEach-Object { $Rand = New-Object Random }{ $Rand.Next( 0, $l - 1 ) } )