[Info-vax] Suggestion: Adding a /SORT option to DIRECTORY and F$SEARCH ?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/26/2022 1:48 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-01-26, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>> Den 2022-01-26 kl. 15:03, skrev Simon Clubley:
>>> On 2022-01-26, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> True, but with modern HW sizes then it would be an extremely
>>>> rare case.
>>>>
>>>> 1 thousand entries of 256 bytes is only 256 KB.
>>>>
>>>> 1 million entries of 256 bytes is "only" 256 MB.
>>>>
>>>
>>> And that's only virtual memory which is needed. You don't even need
>>> that much physical memory to be present to process a gigantic directory.
>>>
>>
>> How do you process this with reasonable performance if you do not
>> have the physical memory to store your filenames in and do the sorting?
> 
> That depends on the OS paging algorithms and the sorting algorithm in use.
> 
>> And what kind of "virtual" memory are you talking about?
> 
> Normal process virtual memory. Only a small part of the virtual address
> space of an active process needs to be backed by physical memory at any
> one time, although ideally most of it would be.

I don't think DIR causing hard PF's would provide a good UX.

But luckily I don't think it would be necessary.

Arne