title: Testing implementation details for automated assessment of sorting algorithms
body: <p>I'm looking at automated assignments for an introductory algorithms and data structures course. Students submit code, I run boost tests on them, the number of passed tests gives a grade, easy. But I want to assess sorting algorithms, for example &quot;Implement bubble-, insertion-, selection- and merge-sort&quot;. Is there a clever way to test the implementations of each to know they did in fact implement the algorithm requested?</p>
  <p>Obviously I can check they sorted the inputs. But what I really want is something better than just comparing the timings for various inputs to check complexities.</p>