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Old 01-26-2004, 09:12 AM   #6 (permalink)
cheerios
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Location: 'bout 2 feet from my iMac
Ok, big O notation actually has NOTHING to do with physical coding. What it is, is a way of representing the efficiency of an algorithm. example: if an array has n elements, and I want to write an algorithm to copy the contents of the array to a new one with size (n+1), then for very large values of n, I can do it in ~ n steps. one for each element that needs copied. so we say that algorithm has an efficiency of O(n). some alogirthms are O(n * ln(n)) or O(n^2) <-- those are SLOW. There are ways (don't ask me I'm only through ch 1 of the algorithms HW) to analyze your arrays and see what efficiency they have. I'd hit up an algorithms book & look up efficiency or algorithmic analysis and see what it has to say, if I were you. good luck
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