11.4 S o r t e d L i s t | 543Table 11.1 File Sorting
Original File Sorted File
red black
blue blue
yellow brown
brown crimson
black green
pink orange
green pink
orange red
white rose
violet violet
crimson white
rose yellow
course, in this case minIndexwould no longer be an appropriate identifier and should be
changed to maxIndex.
11.4 Sorted List
ListWithSortdoes not provide the user with a true sorted list class. That is, the insertand
deletealgorithms do not preserve ordering by value. The insertoperation places a new item
at the end of the list, regardless of its value. After selectSorthas been executed, the list items
remain in sorted order only until the next insertion or deletion takes place. Of course, the
client could sort the list after every insertion, but this technique is inefficient. Let’s now look
at a sorted list design in which all the list operations cooperate to preserve the sorted order
of the list components.
Brainstorming the Sorted List
The design for the class Listsays nothing about the order of its items. If we want to keep the
list items in sorted order, we need to specify this criterion. Let’s go back to the CRC card de-
sign for Listand indicate that we want the list to be sorted.