A bubble sort’s execution time is a multiple of the square of the number of elements. Because of this, the bubble sort is said to be an n-squared algorithm. You can easily make improvements to a bubble sort to speed it up.

One way is to reverse the direction of passes reading the array, instead of always reading the array in the same direction. This makes out-of-place elements travel quickly to their correct position. This version of a bubble sort is called the shaker sort, because it imparts a shaking motion to the array:

 Public Sub Shaker(Item() As Variant)	Dim Exchange As Boolean	Dim Temp As Variant	Dim x As Integer	Do		Exchange = False		For x = (UBound(Item)) To (LBound(Item) + 1) Step -1			If Item(x - 1) > Item(x) Then				Temp = Item(x - 1)				Item(x - 1) = Item(x)				Item(x) = Temp				Exchange = True			End If		Next x		For x = (LBound(Item) + 1) To (UBound(Item))			If Item(x - 1) > Item(x) Then				Temp = Item(x - 1)				Item(x - 1) = Item(x)				Item(x) = Temp				Exchange = True			End If		Next x	Loop While ExchangeEnd Sub

Although the shaker sort improves the bubble sort, it still executes as an n-squared algorithm. However, because most programmers can code a bubble sort with their eyes closed, this is a nice way to shave 25 to 33 percent off the required execution time without having to dig out the algorithm books. Still, you don’t want to use either a bubble or shaker sort for extremely large data sets.