RE: Sorting large file

What is the name of that VM application that does what you want?  STAIRS
maybe?

Try this idea.

write a program to perform your write-shift-write-shift-...

The program reads from your original source and outputs to a file with an 80
by text field and there is an index over the test field.  Output records
should be connectable to the source records - obviously.

Put a trigger on the input source file so that if the source changes, the
old output records are deleted and new ones inserted.

Making it a little fancier,

Output two files, the one above in plain text but shifted and a second one
where the words are rewritten into letter-number format to match even with
spelling errors.  I haven't written one of those for a long time.  I don't
remember the name anymore.  It was used by airlines to find people's names
in their reservation systems.

Let the trigger maintain both files.

This takes a little coding up front - you had to do that anyway - but there
is no repeat of the sorting.  The index takes care of it.  You can search
the text index using SQL LIKE operations but be careful - TEXT LIKE '%abc%'
will not use the index.  It will table scan.  I suggest that you suppress
the leading % to make it work a little more smoothly.

Richard Jackson
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
http://www.richardjacksonltd.com
Voice: 1 (303) 808-8058
Fax:   1 (303) 663-4325

-|-----Original Message-----
-|From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
-|[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Leif Svalgaard
-|Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 1:11 PM
-|To: List Midrange
-|Subject: Sorting large file
-|
-|
-|Folks,
-|
-|I have a sequential file of 10,000,000 80-character text records.
-|How do I sort the file the most efficiently?
-|
-|Leif
-|
-|
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