Sorting Lists

Can you sort a list without loading the entire list into memory?

Yes it's possible. You would have to divide the large list into smaller lists and sort through the smaller lists. I would divide the lists into tiers so that sorted values go to a sorted list tier for example, in a list that ranges from 0 1000 of roughly equal distribution, I would divide the list into 10 tiers of 100 and then sort each individual tier.

Can you hax an anus without knowing what an anus is?

of course

If the list is already sorted you don't have to do anything.

>>2
But then the entire list is brought into memory, albeit gradually.

Thats what they did on mainframes with merge sort and tape drives

wait. what?
where will the list come from?

>>6
The assumptions we have in that example include:
The whole list is not completely sorted
The whole list needs to be sorted in order
The number of entries in the list are larger than available memory

I wonder how they do things in a relational database. I'm guessing they sort the list by keyfields before storing the entry in the database.

Just sort your list in memory.

>>10
This. Unless you're doing this as a personal exercise (never a bad idea!). In which case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_sorting is a decent enough starting point.

bampu pantsu