Mauritus national flag problem

Question

I\'ve made a solution for the Dutch national flag problem already.

But this time, I want to try something more difficult: the Mauritus national flag problem - 4 colours,

Answer 1

Here is what I came up with. Instead of colors, I am using numbers.

// l  - index at which 0 should be inserted.
// m1 - index at which 1 should be inserted.
// m2 - index at which 2 should be inserted.
// h  - index at which 3 should be inserted.
l=m1=m2=0;
h=arr.length-1
while(m2 <= h) {
    if (arr[m2] == 0) {
        swap(arr, m2, l);
        l++;

        // m1 should be incremented if it is less than l as 1 can come after all
        // 0's
        //only.
        if (m1 < l) {
            m1++;
        }
        // Now why not always incrementing m2 as we used to do in 3 flag partition
        // while comparing with 0? Let's take an example here. Suppose arr[l]=1
        // and arr[m2]=0. So we swap arr[l] with arr[m2] with and increment l.
        // Now arr[m2] is equal to 1. But if arr[m1] is equal to 2 then we should
        // swap arr[m1] with arr[m2]. That's  why arr[m2] needs to be processed
        // again for the sake of arr[m1]. In any case, it should not be less than
        // l, so incrmenting.
        if(m2

Similarly we can write for five flags.

    l=m1=m2=m3=0;
    h= arr.length-1;
    while(m3 <= h) {
        if (arr[m3] == 0) {
            swap(arr, m3, l);
            l++;
            if (m1 < l) {
                m1++;
            }
            if(m2