Quicksort: Choosing the pivot?

Choosing a random pivot minimizes the chance that you will encounter worst-case O(n 2 ) performance (always choosing first or last would cause worst-case performance for nearly-sorted or nearly-reverse-sorted data). Choosing the middle element would also be acceptable in the majority of cases.

It depends on your requirements. Choosing a pivot at random makes it harder to create a data set that generates O(N^2) performance. 'Median-of-three' (first, last, middle) is also a way of avoiding problems.

Beware of relative performance of comparisons, though; if your comparisons are costly, then Mo3 does more comparisons than choosing (a single pivot value) at random. Database records can be costly to compare.

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