How about splitting the large file into smaller pieces, sorting the individual pieces, then merging those pieces into a single sorted file?

The disadvantage is that you'd need at least double the original file size in free space, but you might mind that the total CPU time would be less, since merging would be fairly fast.

There are lots of cool ways to do it:

.. and there are lots more possibilities .. that would be a fun project.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Team website: Forex Chart Monkey, Forex Technical Analysis and Pickpocket Prevention

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

In reply to Re: sorting very large text files by talexb
in thread sorting very large text files by rnaeye

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