Author: Clyde Roby, James Coryell, Thomas McIntyre and Alan

Smothers

Submitted by: Robert Hassinger, Liberty Mutual Research Center,

Hopkinton, MA

Operating System: OS/8, OS/12 and OS/78 Source Language: PAL-8

Memory Required: 8K Keywords: Sorting; Utilities - OS/8

Abstract: This is a package of programs for sorting Os/8 ASCII files.

SORT is the principal utility. MERGE and XTRACT are companion

programs to assist in the efficient sorting of large data sets.

SORT is designed to work on OS/8 compatible ASCII files. They are

sorted by "records" of up to 512 characters. A record may be defined as

consisting of "n" lines or as all the characters up to an arbitrary record

mark character. The user has the option to define fields for sorting either

by fixed column positions or bounded by arbitrary delimiting characters.

The sorting can be either ascending or descending, character or numeric

within each field. A total of 32 keys can be defined by columns or 42 by

delimiter. The sorting procedure used is multi-pass sort-meerge with

intermediate temporary files. The devices for the files may be specified to

optimize the sorting. The original intent of the design was to be able to sort

effectively even on a minimum system with as little as two DECtapes.

MERGE will merge two previously sorted input files into one output

file. The same field definitions as for SORT are used.

XTRACT can be used to reduce the size of a data set before it is

sorted. Records are selected from the input and passed to an output

file based on whether the value of a field is inside or outside of a specified

range of values.

Restrictions: This submission has not been tested under OS/78 V4,

however no problems are anticipated. This submission has not been tested

on the VT278 DECmate. There may be some terminal I/O incompatibility

that would require modification.

Media Service Charge Code: Write-Up (AA), DECtape (HA), Floppy

Diskette (KA) Format: OS/8

Catalog: June 1985