Question

What is the difference between recursive and iterative bubble sort? I thought that iterative is most effecient but is that only with large data sets? If recursive scans through less each time, does that mean its always more effecient?

Answer 1

Answer)
The bubble sort algorithm can be implemented in programming using iterative and recursive techniques in programming. For sorting the n number of elements, the recursive bubble sort first pass goes from 0 to n-2, while the second pass goes from 0 to n-3, and thus it is less each time. While for the iterative bubble sort, the first pass goes from 0 to n-2 and also the second pass and later is from 0 to n-2.

Thus is can be that for the larger datasets the recursive version is faster than the iterative version of bubble sort. If the recursive scans through less each time, however, it does not mean that always it is going to be more efficient as mathematically both of the versions is having the complexity of O(n^2). And also the recursive version of the bubble sort uses more memory. Mathematically however the same complexity is for both of them but practically for large data sets, it is a bit faster for recursive.