Design Patterns discussion

["Chris Finlayson" <cfinlayson AT vls-inc.com>]

Hello everyone,

It seems to me that the Strategy Pattern and Bridge Pattern are equivalent
both in intent and implementation, therefore I must have a
misconception....I was hoping if someone could help clarify my
understanding.

Let's focus on the application of a strategy pattern as applied to sorting.

Assume I have a few sorting algorithms that do the same thing...take in
numbers, sort, then spit out numbers.  Therefore, I could have:

1. ISortStrategy - the interface to the concrete strategies
2. QuickSortStrategy - A concrete sort strategy that implements
ISortStrategy
3. MergeSortStrategy - Another concrete sort strategy that implements
ISortStrategy
etc....

Now, in the context of the program that's calling the concrete strategies,
it instantiaties an ISortStrategy (maybe via a factory with the proper
argument as to whether to use a QuickSort, MergeSort, etc.).

Now, I see this as identifical to the Bridge pattern....where the
ISortStrategy is the abstraction and the concrete sort strategies are the
implementations.  What am I missing?

Thanks!

--Chris.