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A limiting distribution for quicksort. (English) Zbl 0677.68072
Summary: We establish the existence of limiting distribution for the number of comparisons performed by quicksort, ot, equivalently, for the external path length of a binary search tree. We assume a uniform distribution of the data and prove a convergence in distribution and in $$L^ p$$, $$p\geq 1$$. The proof is based on a martingale argument.

##### MSC:
 68P10 Searching and sorting 60G42 Martingales with discrete parameter 68P05 Data structures
##### Keywords:
quicksort; binary search tree; distribution of the data
Quicksort
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##### References:
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