Assignment 3

CSC 241- Assignment 3 (Due August 5th 1996)

Your main task here is to develop the merge sort algorithm, but, we would like a user interface that graphically demonstrates how it works.

Add a sort method to intList. It will be helpful to already have done lab4 before this assignment. In that lab you added a size field to intList that will be used here. As the name indicates this method sorts the list of integers. However, it doesn't do this on its own. When the sort method is invoked you must then invoke a recursive merge sort method that is private and takes the head of the list as and the size of the list as parameters. This recursive sort method will return a new head which is the head of the list after the sorting is complete.
Test the sort method by writing a test program. This test program must append 100 randomly generated integer numbers in the rage of 10 to 300 to the list, invoke the dump method, invoke the sort method, and again invoke the dump method. You will need to import the class java.lang.Math. This class has a random () method which you can use to generate random numbers between 0 and 1. To demonstrate the use of random (), I wrote test3.java .
Develop a Sort Applet which has been inspired by Sort Applet Demo made available at javasoft. Notice that the Applet that you will develop won't have the multi-threading requirements that the demo from javasoft had. It is still a neat little applet! You have the choice of extending intList further to give it drawing capabilities or letting the applet draw the lines. It may be easier to let intList hold integer values and let the applet draw the lines. The idea is simple, you start with a default list of values, say 20 randomly chosen integers. Draw lines based on those values. Also, show those values at the bottom of the screen (I used the dump method in intList). Each time the user clicks on the Sort List, your applet sorts the list and redraws the lines, also dumping the sorted list at the bottom. Each time user clicks on New List, a new set of values are generated that you again draw lines for and dump at the bottom. The Max Count is made changable, but you can't allow too many lines. Checkout Tank Applet2 written by my independent study student David Fleming for some hints on user interfaces.