This is a problem that appears as a practice question in Introduction to Algorithms 2rd edition, 3rd Edition by Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen. It’s also an interesting exercise / excuse to dig far too deep into quicksort!

## Pseudocode

def tailRecursiveQuickSort(A, startIdx, endIdx):
while startIdx < endIdx:
pivotIdx = PARTITION(A, startIdx, endIdx)
tailRecursiveQuickSort(A, startIdx, pivotIdx - 1)
startIdx = pivotIdx + 1


## Analysis

In the first iteration of tailRecursiveQuickSort, the left subarray gets processed i.e. the first call is $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, 1, q-1)$

After this the p value changes to $p_{2} = q + 1$ which is the p-value for the second iteration which makes the call $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, p_{2}, q_{2}-1)$ where $q_{2} = \textbf{PARTITION}(A, p_{2}, r)$.

This can be generalized to the $i^{th}$ iteration as follows:

• Function call made: $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, q_{i-1} + 1, q_{i} - 1),$
• $p_{i} = q_{i-1} + 1,$
• $q_{i} = \textbf{PARTITION}(A, q_{i-1} + 1, r)$

Observe that: $q_{i-1} + 1 \leq q_{i} \leq r$. Thus during each iteration, $q$ is guaranteed to be incremented by at least $1$.

Additionally, by the $i^{th}$ iteration, the following recursive calls have been excuted on disjoint subarrays of $A$

• $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, p_{1}, q_{1} - 1)$ where $p_{1} = 1, q_{1} = q$
• $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, q_{1} + 1, q_{2} - 1)$
• $\vdots$
• $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, q_{i-1} + 1, q_{i} - 1)$

Since each of these calls acts on a disjoint sub-array with intermediate calls to PARTIION which guarantees that each $q_{i}$ is in it’s correct place; these calls can be group together to be seen as a single call to tailRecursiveQuickSort which performs the divide.

Therefore calls from $(b)$ through $©$ above can be grouped into: $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, q+1, q_{i}-1)$ at the end of the $i^{th}$ iteration.

Since $q_{i}$ is guaranteed to increase every by atleast $1$ every iteration, so is $p_{i} = q_{i} + 1$. This implies that the while loop must terminate for some value of $p_{i} > r$, which is guaranteed due to its strictly increasing behavior. Therefore the sequence $q_{i}$ must eventually cross $r$ for some $i = k$ such that $q_{k} \geq r$.

So the sequence of calls from the second iteration onwards can be rewritten as the following net result: $\textbf{tailRecursiveQuickSort}(A, q+1, r)$. Therefore the original tailRecursiveQuickSort function can be rewritten as follows (after fully unrolling the while loop)

def tailRecursiveQuickSort(A, startIdx, endIdx):
pivotIdx = PARTITION(A, startIdx,
tailRecursiveQuickSort(A, startIdx, pivotIdx - 1)
tailRecursiveQuickSort(A, endIdx, pivotIdx + 1)


## Conculsion

The last bit of pseudocode we made by transforming the original code is exactly the same as QUICKSORT therefore, tailRecursiveQuickSort and QUICKSORT are functionally equivalent, proving that tailRecursiveQuickSort is able to sort any input sequence, given the correctness of the PARTITION routine.

Alternatively, one can also say that the correctness, convergence of QUICKSORT guarantees the correctness of this tail recursive form.