Re: Simple disk-based sorting method

Citizen Bob wrote:
> 
> As I mentioned the thing that makes the Radix Sort so valueable,
> besides being disk-file-based, is that its complexity is O(N). Other
> sort methods in general are either O(N^2) or O(N log N).

I see nothing about the Radix sort which makes it "disk based."

Your solution is clumsy because it depends on your source data having 
some sort of order and uniform distribution.

> > Another thing I like is the simplicity of the Radix Sort. I am not a
> database person, so for me this is an excursion into an area I have
> not mastered. The fact that the Radix Sort is so easy to implement in
> C is a blessing.

Should be several sort routines in your existing C libraries.

What I described wasn't so much as a sort algorithm but a means of 
overflowing in tem****ary files. I said to sort in memory, but didn't 
make any recommendations as to how one should sort in memory.

> It is overkill for small sorts, for which I use the C Library function
> "qsort". Now I have both ends of the spectrum covered.

Most any in-memory sort will be faster than any disk-based sort.