#3 is the idea I like most

I don't know much about american phone numbers, but if they all have a fixed length of 10, you'd just need slightly more than 1GB disk space to store one bit for each existing number.

I wouldn't create this bit vector in memory. Just create a big enough file, initialized with zeros and then go through your text file and position with fseek to $phone_num >> 3 and set bit number $phone_num & 7.

do the same positioning for read access, but check the bit.

I think searching will be done in less than a second.

Update: Of course you can couple this with the idea of splitting for each area code. This should reduce the summed size of your three files to 1/333 (about 4MB) if the area code has 3 numbers.

Update #2: If you have 10 numbers in each phone number and have 2million numbers you already have 21MB disk space used. So the bit vector on disk will save you 16MB.

s$$([},&%#}/&/]+}%&{})*;#$&&s&&$^X.($'^"%]=\&(|?*{%
+.+=%;.#_}\&"^"-+%*).}%:##%}={~=~:.")&e&&s""`$''`"e

In reply to Re^2: Searching text files by Skeeve
in thread Searching text files by SteveS832001

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.