sort makes big working files

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2 total messages Started by info-vax Sat, 19 Oct 1985 00:12

#165

Author: info-vax
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1985 00:12

25 lines
1340 bytes

From: Jeff Deifik <JDEIFIK@USC-ISIB.ARPA>

I am attempting to sort a text file with the following characteristics:
2722 blocks
11343 lines
variable length lines maximum 32K
stream LF
carraige return carriage control
1848 characters/line actual maximum

I defined sortwork0..9 to be on 5 different big disks and said
$sort/work_files=1 foo bar

My working set went up to 6087
The free disk space on one disk went down by 500,000 blocks
Sort seemed to use space from mainly sortwork1
I aborted sort when the disk space on one disk ran low
On other runs sort reported out of disk space, and aborted

Why did sort try to use 500,000 blocks of space?
What can I do to sort this file?
	(I really want the key to be the entire line of text)

	Jeff Deifik	jdeifik@usc-isib.ARPA	jdeifik@isi.ARPA
-------

Re: sort makes big working files

#199

Author: Mike Clarkson
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1985 17:39

13 lines
1314 bytes

Almost all sort algorithms use geometrically increasing space (and time)
to sort a file.  Although the sizes of the files created seem huge, 
they may be correct.  The simple way around this is to break the large 
file into say 10 smaller files and SORT them individually, and then use
MERGE to take the 10 sorted small files, and create your final sorted file.

{decvax|inhp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!yetti!mike
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