[Pdx-pm] Software development and The Rules
chromatic
chromatic at wgz.org
Thu Sep 26 16:46:15 CDT 2002
On Thursday 26 September 2002 14:32, Curtis Poe wrote:
> As for sorting the list, you mentioned something along the lines of "the
> most space-efficient" way".
>
> How are you defining space efficient? Do you mean memory efficient? My
> initial thought for the problem would be to use a merge sort via the
> File::Sort module, but since that creates temp files, perhaps that's not
> the most "space-efficient".
I believe I can make the right answer a little clearer. The nature of the
data is pretty simple. Not only are there ten possible values for each
digit, but there are probably fewer than a thousand valid prefixes.
Instead of storing each digit as a character (multiple bytes in a Unicode
world), you can pack them into a smaller format. I'd guess that three bytes
apiece should do it, with some back of the envelope math.
A radix sort might be nice, too, but that's just a guess. :)
-- c
More information about the Pdx-pm-list
mailing list