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Annotation of researchv10dc/cmd/sort/README, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: Posix P1003.2 sort utility from Unix research v10 system.
        !             2: 
        !             3: To build it:
        !             4:        make sort
        !             5: To test it:
        !             6:        make test
        !             7: 
        !             8: On many systems, you may be able to make a faster sort:
        !             9:        make fast
        !            10:        make test
        !            11: 
        !            12: File sort.1 is a manual page.
        !            13: 
        !            14: ---------------------------------------------------------
        !            15: 
        !            16: Extensions to POSIX:
        !            17:        Obsolescent features:
        !            18:                +pos -pos field specifications
        !            19:                -o recognized among file names
        !            20:        Traditional features not in POSIX:
        !            21:                -M for sorting by month
        !            22:                -T for setting temp directory
        !            23:                -y for setting memory size
        !            24:                -z (ignored)
        !            25:                -t may be combined with other options, e.g. -ct:
        !            26:        New features:
        !            27:                -g like -n, but allows e-format numbers
        !            28:                -s stable sort; break ties by original order,
        !            29:                   not by raw bytes
        !            30: 
        !            31: Algorithm: distribution sort, with preconditioning of difficult keys
        !            32:        to make them into simple strings.
        !            33:        Overlong data spills to intermediate files, where it is
        !            34:        sorted by merging.
        !            35: 
        !            36: Language: ANSI C.
        !            37: 
        !            38: Testing: passes the accompanying sorttest suite, which exercises
        !            39:        every line of code, except for
        !            40:                option -T
        !            41:                some instances of -y
        !            42:                error comments
        !            43:                interrupt handling
        !            44:                excessive exponents (>~1000) in -g
        !            45: 
        !            46: Typical problems:
        !            47:        On some systems the ANSI standard functions memmove.c
        !            48:        and strtoul.c are slow or absent.  Code for these
        !            49:        functions is included; use it if you have to
        !            50:        (see Makefile).
        !            51: 
        !            52:        The sorttest suite uses awk as described in the
        !            53:        Aho/Kernighan/Weinberger book.  Older versions of awk
        !            54:        may not be adequate.
        !            55: 
        !            56:        ANSI header files are assumed, but because headers
        !            57:        vary among systems, you may have to do some clever
        !            58:        rearrangement of #include directives.
        !            59: 
        !            60: Notes on "make fast":
        !            61:        In extreme cases (very long records in nearly sorted
        !            62:        order) the "make fast" sort can run 40% faster than the
        !            63:        "make sort" version.  It uses a private addition to
        !            64:        classic System V stdio, not universally portable.
        !            65:        However, if the new function cgets() will compile, it
        !            66:        will almost certainly work.
        !            67: 
        !            68: Report troubles to:
        !            69:        Doug McIlroy
        !            70:        908 582 6050
        !            71:        research!doug
        !            72:        [email protected]

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