04-04-2005, 07:07 AM
Dean,
You are really making things difficult for the subject sort.
1) 3 million strings of 7 bytes each. That's 21 million bytes. I don't know the limits of FreeBasic for handling that capacity in memory, but even with memory paging or swapping, it's going to run slow.
2) Next, you generate your input in descending order. For most sort algorithms, that's the worst case for speed.
3) No sort algorithm that I have ever seen in 40 years is going to solve your problem. The volume of strings (or records) that you have will slow down any sort.
4) Your fundamental problem is sorting these 7 million strings (or records) in memory. I suggest the following:-
* Do the sorting "off-line" from your program. That is, put or generate the strings onto a flat, text file.
* Do a test using the old MSDOS SORT command from the command line. Run SORT /? for help. In your case, the command would be:
SORT INPFILE /O OUTFILE
* Then process the sorted OUTFILE as required by your program.
* If SORT does not satisfy you need for speed, then go to:
WWW.OPTTECH.COM and buy the best sort program I have ever seen. The DOS version costs $149. You won't find anything better. The OptTech people have been exclusively providing sorts for over 20 years.
Good luck. Let us know how it went.
*****
You are really making things difficult for the subject sort.
1) 3 million strings of 7 bytes each. That's 21 million bytes. I don't know the limits of FreeBasic for handling that capacity in memory, but even with memory paging or swapping, it's going to run slow.
2) Next, you generate your input in descending order. For most sort algorithms, that's the worst case for speed.
3) No sort algorithm that I have ever seen in 40 years is going to solve your problem. The volume of strings (or records) that you have will slow down any sort.
4) Your fundamental problem is sorting these 7 million strings (or records) in memory. I suggest the following:-
* Do the sorting "off-line" from your program. That is, put or generate the strings onto a flat, text file.
* Do a test using the old MSDOS SORT command from the command line. Run SORT /? for help. In your case, the command would be:
SORT INPFILE /O OUTFILE
* Then process the sorted OUTFILE as required by your program.
* If SORT does not satisfy you need for speed, then go to:
WWW.OPTTECH.COM and buy the best sort program I have ever seen. The DOS version costs $149. You won't find anything better. The OptTech people have been exclusively providing sorts for over 20 years.
Good luck. Let us know how it went.
*****