Hi codingchemist, that depends on how large and complex your data set is.

If you are dealing with straight forward flat files (like csv type of files), the unix command-line sort is usually the fastest. The syntax is simple too, eg., sort -t "\t" -k 3 input.txt > output.txt will sort the tab delimited input file based on 3rd key.

Otherwise you could use a different sorting algorithm, like heap sort.

The heap sort is the slowest of the O(n log n) sorting algorithms, but unlike the merge and quick sorts it doesn't require massive recursion or multiple arrays to work. This makes it the most attractive option for very large data sets of millions of items. There is a description and code example here at the WKU-Linux user group.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: (Guildenstern) Re: Re: Taming a memory hog by Roger
in thread Taming a memory hog by Guildenstern

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