Radix Sort Algorithm in DSA Javascript - Build from Scratch

Radix Sort Algorithm

📖 Scenario: You work in a warehouse where boxes are labeled with numbers. You want to organize these boxes in order from smallest to largest number quickly and efficiently.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that sorts a list of numbers using the Radix Sort algorithm, which sorts numbers digit by digit from the least significant digit to the most significant digit.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called numbers with the exact values: [170, 45, 75, 90, 802, 24, 2, 66]

Create a variable called maxDigits to store the number of digits in the largest number

Write a function called radixSort that sorts the numbers array using Radix Sort

Print the sorted array after applying Radix Sort

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Radix Sort is used in systems where sorting large sets of numbers quickly is important, like organizing warehouse inventory or processing large datasets.

💼 Career

Understanding Radix Sort helps in roles involving data processing, optimization, and algorithm design, which are common in software engineering and data science jobs.

1

Create the initial array of numbers

Create an array called numbers with these exact values: [170, 45, 75, 90, 802, 24, 2, 66]

DSA Javascript

// Create the array called numbers with the given values
// Your code here

Hint

Use const numbers = [...] to create the array with the exact numbers.

2

Find the maximum number of digits

Create a variable called maxDigits that stores the number of digits in the largest number in the numbers array

DSA Javascript

const numbers = [170, 45, 75, 90, 802, 24, 2, 66];
// Create maxDigits to hold the number of digits in the largest number
// Your code here

Hint

Use Math.max(...numbers) to find the largest number, then convert it to string and get its length.

3

Write the Radix Sort function

Write a function called radixSort that takes the numbers array and sorts it using Radix Sort algorithm by processing digits from least significant to most significant

DSA Javascript

const numbers = [170, 45, 75, 90, 802, 24, 2, 66];
const maxDigits = Math.max(...numbers).toString().length;
// Write the radixSort function below
// Your code here

Hint

Use a loop from 0 to maxDigits - 1. Create 10 buckets for digits 0-9. Place numbers in buckets based on current digit. Flatten buckets back to array. Return sorted array.

4

Print the sorted array

Call the radixSort function with the numbers array and print the sorted result using console.log

DSA Javascript

const numbers = [170, 45, 75, 90, 802, 24, 2, 66];
const maxDigits = Math.max(...numbers).toString().length;

function radixSort(arr) {
    for (let digit = 0; digit  []);
        for (const num of arr) {
            const digitValue = Math.floor(num / Math.pow(10, digit)) % 10;
            buckets[digitValue].push(num);
        }
        arr = [].concat(...buckets);
    }
    return arr;
}

// Call radixSort and print the sorted array
// Your code here

Hint

Call radixSort(numbers) and print the result with console.log.