In
computer science,
quickselect is a
selection algorithm to find the
kth smallest element in an unordered list. It is related to the
quicksort sorting algorithm. Like quicksort, it was developed by
Tony Hoare, and thus is also known as
Hoare's selection algorithm. Like quicksort, it is efficient in practice and has good average-case performance, but has poor worst-case performance. Quickselect and variants is the selection algorithm most often used in efficient real-world implementations.