SORT

Sorting Visualizer

Watch a sort run one step at a time. Press play and follow the bars, the highlighted pseudocode, and the running tally of work done.

Repeatedly swaps adjacent out-of-order pairs. The simplest sort to picture — but O(n²) and slow.

Bubble sort compares each neighbouring pair and swaps them if they're out of order, so big values 'bubble' to the right.

Comparisons

Swaps

Writes

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Pseudocode

Bubble Sort

1for i in 0 .. n-2:

2 swapped = false

3 for j in 0 .. n-2-i:

4 if a[j] > a[j+1]:

5 swap(a[j], a[j+1])

6 swapped = true

7 if not swapped: break // already sorted

Legend

ComparingSwappingSorted

Data

Size 10

Tip: Space play/pause · ← → step

Learn sorting

Sorting arranges items into order (here, smallest → largest). All three sorts on this page are comparison sorts: they decide what goes where purely by comparing pairs of values.

They're also in-place (they reuse the same array, O(1) extra memory) and simple to reason about. The trade-off is speed: each runs in O(n²) on average, so they shine on small or nearly-sorted inputs rather than huge datasets.

Stable

Keeps equal values in their original relative order. Bubble & insertion are stable; selection is not.

In-place

Sorts within the array itself — no second array needed, so memory stays at O(1).