If you have a huge number of files, Heap may be the way to go. According to my college algorithms book, building a heap from an unordered array is O(n) time. After that, you can pull the top element off and rebuild the heap in O(log n) time. In this way, you can get the "top n" elements without having to go through a full sort (which is O(n log n)).

If there isn't a huge number of files, a Schwartzian Transform is probably the way to go.

It would be interesting to Benchmark these two and see where the cut-off is. How big does the array have to be before the greater efficiency of the heap beats the greater efficiency of built-in sort written in C?

In reply to Re: How can I access a cross directory set of data files by most recently modified date? by kyle
in thread How can I access a cross directory set of data files by most recently modified date? by SkipHuffman

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