Because selection sort divides the input list into two parts: a sublist of sorted items and a sublist of still unsorted items, would it be possible to create two different functions and connect them together? I have my sorting algorithm done but I cannot figure out how to split them.
def selection_sort(l):
for i in range(len(l)):
start_index = i
for j in range(i + 1, len(l)):
if l[start_index] > l[j]:
min_value = j
l[i], l[start_index] = l[start_index], l[i]
l = [64, 25, 12, 22, 11]
print(l)
What I would like to have is to split it into this:
def min_index(l, start_index) & def selection_sort(l)
First of all, the code you have presented is not correct:
There is only one swap happening, unconditionally, as the last statement of the function. This cannot be right of course. The number of swaps needed to sort a list varies depending its order.
The second loop never iterates: i has reached the length of the input, and so range(i + 1, len(i)) is an empty range.
The value of min_value is never used.
The first two issues are probably because you copied the code in a wrong way, and missed some necessary indentation. The second issue is because of two different names which should really be the same name.
Here is a corrected version:
def selection_sort(l):
for i in range(len(l)):
start_index = i
for j in range(i + 1, len(l)):
if l[start_index] > l[j]:
start_index = j
l[i], l[start_index] = l[start_index], l[i]
Now to your question: you can indeed put the logic of the inner loop into another function. Like this:
def min_index(l, i):
for j in range(i + 1, len(l)):
if l[i] > l[j]:
i = j
return i
def selection_sort(l):
for i in range(len(l)):
j = min_index(l, i)
l[i], l[j] = l[j], l[i]