O.K. so why is sorting so important, and why do people make so much fuss about the subject ? The idea of sorting is simple; you start with a group of objects in a random order, and by applying a set of rules to the objects, the objects acquire predictable relationships with respect to each other. Long winded or what ! Put simply, you arrange the objects into a logical order. Since all computers deal exclusivly with numbers ( Even the words on this screen are just numbers in the computer's memory. ) we will only consider numbers. So consider a group of numbers in any order, wouldn't it be usefull to know the largest, and smallest numbers, and also how large any number is in relation to the others. If we take our group of numbers then there are two obvious ways of organising them; in ascending, and descending order of magnitude. Any other more complicated relationship is pointless.