David Muir Sharnoff wrote: > I've got 200 1GB pre-sorted files. If I try to merge > them with sort -m, it is obvioulsy trying to do too much > work: after running for a couple minutes, it has not > produced any output but it has made a 5 GB temporary > file. > > When the input is pre-sorted, no temporary file should > be required. > > Output should begin immediately.
Hi David, The reason you're not seeing output immediately is because sort internally limits the number of files it will read at once. By default this limit is set to 16. When more files are to be merged, sort uses temporary files. Starting in release 7.0 this limit will be modifiable on the command-line using the --bath-size=N option. With 200 files you'll still need to balance your desire for immediate output against the performance implications of reading from so many files at once, but the choice will be yours. Thanks, Bo _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
