On 20 Jan 96 18:13, Lewin Edwards wrote to Kieran Haughey:

Hi Lewin,

KH>> I plan on getting a 250meg hdd for $120-145 brand new.. soon :)..

LE> Considering a 1Gb drive is now only about $400, if "soon"
isn't "this 
LE> evening", wait just a little longer, save, and buy something bigger.

A 1Gig hard drive on a 386DX16.. not on your nelly I will :).. that's like
kicking yourself :).. the speed of the drive would be REALLY slow :)..

Anyway, I am planning on getting a new computer anyway, so I don't really
need anything really large, because I'll be buying the poota with something
large in it :)

PE>>>> You don't have a choice.  How were you planning on sorting
PE>>>> something larger than the size of memory without having to
PE>>>> read it into memory from disk all the time?  There may be
KH>>>> Multiple passing??.. I was originally thinking of a
method where you

LE> First, read the first letter of every word. Create a temporary file for 
LE> each start-letter you find. (I mean, create a temporary file for each 
LE> starting letter, but don't create a temporary file if there are no words to 
LE> go into it. For example, if there are no words in your original file which 
LE> start with "Q", don't create a temporary file for Q-words).

Damned good idea there, the only problem is that to be safe you could only
keep 10 files open..  and you'd have to keep opening and
closing files.. apart from that it's brillient :).. 
ÿ
Cheers,
Kieran

3:711/413.17{at}fidonet
@EOT:

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