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

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2022-01-26 kl. 20:28, skrev 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.

That is why I asked what virmem has to do with anything here.

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

No, probably not. DIR's are usually not that large on VMS.

> Arne
>