Sorting

Order elements as a preprocessing step to enable efficient scans, binary search, two-pointer, or greedy algorithms downstream.

Order elements as a preprocessing step to enable efficient scans, binary search, two-pointer, or greedy algorithms downstream.

After sorting, elements[i] ≤ elements[i+1] — enabling O(n) scans where unsorted input would require O(n²) pairwise comparisons.

Sorting costs O(n log n) once; subsequent binary searches are O(log n) and single-pass scans are O(n), reducing total work vs unsorted approaches.