Suppose you are provided with the following function declaration in the C…

PYQ GATE 2015

Suppose you are provided with the following function declaration in the C programming language.

int partition(int a[], int n);

The function treats the first element of aa[ ] as a pivot and rearranges the array so that all elements less than or equal to the pivot is in the left part of the array, and all elements greater than the pivot is in the right part. In addition, it moves the pivot so that the pivot is the last element of the left part. The return value is the number of elements in the left part.

The following partially given function in the C programming language is used to find the kthk^{th} smallest element in an array aa[ ] of size nn using the partition function. We assume k≤nk \leq n.

int kth_smallest(int a[], int n, int k)
{
    int left_end = partition(a, n);
    if (left_end+1 == k) {
        return a[left_end];
    }
    if (left_end+1 > k) {
        return kth_smallest(___________);
    } else {
        return kth_smallest(___________);
    }
}

The missing arguments lists are respectively

  1. A.

    (a, left_end, k) and (a+left_end+1, n-left_end-1, k-left_end-1)

  2. B.

    (a, left_end, k) and (a, n-left_end-1, k-left_end-1)

  3. C.

    (a+left_end+1, n-left_end-1, k-left_end-1) and (a, left_end, k)

  4. D.

    (a, n-left_end-1, k-left_end-1) and (a, left_end, k)

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