🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <902505530.28303.2.nnrp-01.d4e48b20@news.demon.co.uk>,
Alisdair Wren <alisdair@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes

>I am current in the process of writing a newsreader:  The biggest 
>problem I have come across is sorting the list of newsgroups in a 
>reasonable time:  I've got it down to 11.87 seconds so far.  The second 
>biggest problem is searching the newsgroup list in a reasonable time 
>;-).  The actual programming involved isn't too difficult, it just 
>getting all the algorithms to run in a reasonable time.

try Knuth Volume 3 (the second edition is now out!)  or indeed any
textbook on algorithms

>While I'm about it:  Does anyone know if newsgroup names are case 
>sensitive??

they are case sensitive but you must not use upper case. In practice at
the moment there are newsgroups which clash if considered casesensitive
but the lower case version is getting all the traffic

>Obviously, Binary comparisons take much less time than Text 
>comparisons, so if I could just stick everything in lower case life 
>would be much easier.  The only reason I ask is that Intel have defined 
>both the Intel.* and the intel.* heirarchies.

indeed

-- 
richard                      richard.clayton    @    T U R N P I K E .com
 http://www.demon.net/news/features/crypto/  for Demon's views on crypto
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM