RE: Sorting file based on variable string

Rather than defend/support/rate/complain-about the merits of any given
solution, why don't we just leave it to the OP to accept same - or not? Why
all this "my dog is better than yours" nonsense?

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"The man with the best job in the country is the Vice-President. All he has
to do is get up every morning and say, 'How's the President?'"
-- Will Rogers

On Behalf Of John Yeung

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 7:22 AM, CRPence <CRPbottle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 21-Jan-2012 21:08 , John Yeung wrote:

It's interesting to see the solutions people come up with, based to a
very large extent on what they are comfortable with. "When all you
have is a hammer, all your problems start looking like nails" and all
that.

  Or, the problem might just be a nail.

Absolutely. Plus, I think it's an oversimplification to imply that modern
tools are as simple and narrow-purpose as a hammer. It actually grates on

me

whenever I read someone say, in a computer context, "use the right tool

for

the job". I think most computer problems have many "right" tools. It

would

be more accurate to say "don't use the wrong tool for the job", but that

is

longer and doesn't have the same ring to it, I guess.

(And, as you imply when you say "if ..., then the best tool for the job

would

presumably be...", it is more often the case that there are "better" and
"worse" tools, rather than "right" and "wrong" ones.)

  Besides that, the OP stated that they wanted to avoid their current
proposed solution that would "create an intermediate file, with the
Last Name as a separate field".  And their own solution description
which they apparently have chosen to avoid, seems little different
than the "Unixy" solution that was proposed.?

I agree. My own feeling is that, if the OP has enough disk space (he

seems to

mention the size of the file in order to impress upon us that either

memory or

disk could be a constraint), then the most straightforward solution,
regardless of specific language/environment, is to make an explicit
intermediate file which is more easily sorted.
I.e. in broad terms, to use OP's own solution.

You brought up another good point, which is: It could make a difference
whether the file is a physical file or a stream file. This is one reason

my

favorite "hammer" on the i is iSeries Python. It handles both with

incredible

ease. (I didn't already suggest this route for the OP mostly because he
seemed to be looking for solutions that don't involve writing his own

program.)

John Y.
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