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Understanding Quicksort's Partition Step

PR
Tate LindgrenTeacher Tier
@author · 2026-08-28 · v1
7 min read
Quicksort picks a pivot, partitions the array so smaller elements go left and larger go right, then recursively sorts both halves. Average time is
O(nlog⁡n)O(n \log n)
, worst case
O(n2)O(n^2)
when the pivot is always the smallest or largest. Choosing a random pivot avoids the worst case in practice.
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