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From: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: sorting large numbers of large records
Date: 29 Jul 2003 09:30:51 -0500
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In article <bg5rol$rnp$1@grapevine.wam.umd.edu>, "Brien L. Christesen" <blchrist@rac1.wam.umd.edu> writes:

> That is a good point, and I looked into the unix sort command.  The only
> problem is that as far as I can tell, that only sorts text files.  I have
> a file of binary records, so I have no idea how I could use a system sort
> command to do it.  Is there any way that would work?

Even the complex Sort Specification format on VMS does not provide for
sorting based on non-ascii fields.  To use the built-in VMS sort facility
on non-ascii fields, you have to use the Callable Sort entrypoints, giving
your own User Compare routine.

Perhaps the same thing is true on one or more flavors of Unix.