Why Sorting Matters and How It Unlocks Other Algorithms in DSA C++ - See It Work

Why Sorting Matters and How It Unlocks Other Algorithms

📖 Scenario: Imagine you run a small bookstore. You have a list of book prices, but they are all mixed up. To quickly find the cheapest or most expensive book, or to check if a certain price exists, you need to organize this list. Sorting the prices helps you do all these tasks faster and easier.

🎯 Goal: You will create a program that sorts a list of book prices in ascending order. Then, you will use this sorted list to find the cheapest book price. This project shows how sorting helps unlock other useful operations.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a vector called bookPrices with the exact values: 45, 12, 78, 34, 23

Create an integer variable called n that stores the size of bookPrices

Sort the bookPrices vector in ascending order using std::sort

Create an integer variable called cheapestPrice that stores the first element of the sorted bookPrices

Print the sorted bookPrices vector in the format: 12 23 34 45 78

Print the cheapestPrice on a new line

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Sorting prices helps store owners quickly find deals, organize inventory, and prepare reports.

💼 Career

Sorting is a fundamental skill in programming and data analysis, used in many software applications and technical interviews.

1

Create the list of book prices

Create a std::vector<int> called bookPrices with these exact values: 45, 12, 78, 34, 23

DSA C++

#include 
#include 

int main() {

    // Create bookPrices vector with values 45, 12, 78, 34, 23
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use std::vector<int> bookPrices = {45, 12, 78, 34, 23}; to create the list.

2

Store the size of the list

Create an integer variable called n that stores the size of the bookPrices vector using bookPrices.size()

DSA C++

#include 
#include 

int main() {
    std::vector bookPrices = {45, 12, 78, 34, 23};

    // Create integer n to store size of bookPrices
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use int n = bookPrices.size(); to get the number of prices.

3

Sort the book prices

Use std::sort(bookPrices.begin(), bookPrices.end()) to sort the bookPrices vector in ascending order

DSA C++

#include 
#include 
#include 

int main() {
    std::vector bookPrices = {45, 12, 78, 34, 23};
    int n = bookPrices.size();

    // Sort bookPrices in ascending order
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use std::sort(bookPrices.begin(), bookPrices.end()); to sort the vector.

4

Find and print the cheapest price and sorted list

Create an integer variable called cheapestPrice that stores the first element of the sorted bookPrices vector. Then print the sorted bookPrices vector separated by spaces on one line, and print cheapestPrice on the next line.

DSA C++

#include 
#include 
#include 

int main() {
    std::vector bookPrices = {45, 12, 78, 34, 23};
    int n = bookPrices.size();
    std::sort(bookPrices.begin(), bookPrices.end());

    // Create cheapestPrice and print sorted bookPrices and cheapestPrice
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Access the first element with bookPrices[0]. Use a loop to print all prices separated by spaces, then print the cheapest price on the next line.