Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of
adjacent values in the list to be sorted are compared and
interchanged if they are out of order; thus, list entries `bubble
upward' in the list until they bump into one with a lower sort value.
Because it is not very good relative to other methods and is the one
typically stumbled on by {naive} and untutored programmers, hackers
consider it the {canonical} example of a naive algorithm. (However,
it's been shown by repeated experiment that below about 5000 records
bubble-sort is OK anyway.) The canonical example of a really bad
algorithm is {bogo-sort}. A bubble sort might be used out of
ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain
damage or willful perversity.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bogo-sort}{brute force and ignorance}{buried treasure}{code}{naive}]