This just might be the world's worst sorting algorithm. It is similar to trying to sort a deck of cards by shuffling them and then checking to see if they are in order. The source for the bogosort function is here. The source for main is here. If you want to build it, use this command.

[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$ cc main.c bogosort.c -o main
      

To use the program, give it a quoted string as an argument. It works something like this.

[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$ ./main "foo bar"
Size of list: 7
 Before sort: foo bar
  After sort:  abfoor
Number of iterations: 1789
[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$
      

Bogosort has a terrible time dealing with anything but really small arrays. Lets take a look at how long it takes to sort a reasonably small array on my Athlon box.

[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$ dmesg | grep ^CPU
CPU: AMD-K7(tm) Processor (548.94-MHz 686-class CPU)
[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$ time ./main "christoffel"  
Size of list: 11
 Before sort: christoffel
  After sort: ceffhilorst
Number of iterations: 19962198

real    0m46.992s
user    0m43.155s
sys     0m0.110s
[daver@tombstone:~/src/c/bogosort]$ 
      

Ew... I hope that no one thinks this is a good idea. Remember that we have no way of determining how long the algorithm is going to run. There is a really small chance that it could sort the list on its first iteration, but this is almost as rare as Ethan going to sleep the night before a qLab writeup is due.