The main benefit of course is that there is less code to test/maintain, hence the "low tech" caveat. If it's fast enough for the OP, then it's worth considering. I'm sure the OP can figure this out easily by testing.

On a lesser note I am not convinced that your solution will fairly shuffle the lines, even after a second pass -- though if the number of temp files and or passes is scaled with the number of total lines this may be sufficient for the OP's needs. (I.e. tempfiles^passes probably needs to equal or exceed total number of lines to sort, but that's a WAG).

In reply to Re^3: Strategy for randomizing large files via sysseek by bluto
in thread Strategy for randomizing large files via sysseek by Anonymous Monk

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