How can I sort things that are too large to bring into memory?

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QuestionHow can I sort things that are too large

to bring into memory?Added: 10/22/2004
CategoryCViews: 166
Rating (0.0)By: 0 users
AnswerA sorting program that sorts items that
are on secondary storage (disk or tape) rather
than primary storage (memory) is called an
external sort. Exactly how to sort large data
depends on what is meant by too large to fit in
memory. If the items to be sorted are
themselves too large to fit in memory (such as
images), but there aren t many items, you can
keep in memory only the sort key and a value
indicating the data s location on disk. After
the key/value pairs are sorted, the data is
rearranged on disk into the correct order. If
too large to fit in memory means that there
are too many items to fit into memory at one
time, the data can be sorted in groups that will
fit into memory, and then the resulting files
can be merged. A sort such as a radix sort can
also be used as an external sort, by making each
bucket in the sort a file. Even the quick sort
can be an external sort. The data can be
partitioned by writing it to two smaller files.
When the partitions are small enough to fit,
they are sorted in memory and concatenated to
form the sorted file.
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