Why don't you keep a pre-sorted index array of all the hash keys along with your hash. This would only have to be regenerated when you add or remove hash elements.

Then, you can use a binary search to look up your hash key in the index array and return the next largest key.

This eliminates the sort involved with each lookup, which I would guess is the biggest slowdown to your current code.

It also changes your search from simple to binary, which should cut the search time by an order of magnitude.

In reply to Re: retrieve next avaiable element in sorted hash by jmanning2k
in thread retrieve next avaiable element in sorted hash by vinforget

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