Shell Programming and Scripting

Dear experts

I have a 200MG text file in this format:

text \tab number

I try to sort using options -fd and it takes very long! is that normal or I can speed it up in some ways?
I dont want to split the file since this one is already splitted.

I use this command: sort -fd file > sorted-file

Thanks for the helps and comments.

Seems -f and -d are not useful in your case.

Code:

       -d, --dictionary-order
              consider only blanks and alphanumeric characters

       -f, --ignore-case
              fold lower case to upper case characters

So just sort it directly.

Code:

sort file > sorted-file

Or show your sample data and expect output.

they are useful since the first column is text (alphabetic).

What Operating System and version are you using?
How many records?
How long does the process take?
Do you have spare memory and disc space which you could give to this sort process.

If your sort has a "-o filename" parameter , use this to specify the output file not a Shell redirect (> filename). It will be much much faster.

If set, what is the value of $TMPDIR ? Can it be set to point to a fast filesystem with at least twice the space of the size of the unsorted file?

You can get a dramatic improvement in the performance of unix sort by tuning the "-y kmem" parameter. It is very important that you start with enough memory allocated to do some serious sorting on the first pass.

Off topic: If you have a database engine it is often quicker to load a large file into a database table with suitable keys, then write the file out in the required order.

I'm using linux. infact it takes more than 20 hours and it is not finished yet! I've allocated enough memory on tmpdir! I have no memory problem since it does not run out of memory!

I have about 10 million lines. I haven't set the -y kmem option and I have no idea how to use it. I need a fast improvement! I have no hard disk limitation and I can have a large ram as well.

"Linux" is a bit vague.

Here are my timings for sorting a 600 Mb file after giving "sort" one Gigabyte of memory and a very large workspace. It used about 800 Mb of disc workspace and didn't make a dent in the memory. The unsorted file is random order but I also reverse sorted it to be sure that the test is representative.
This test server is nothing special - a 10 year old HP 9000 with HP-UX 11i and slowish 36Gb 10k rpm discs.

Code:

Ordinary sort:
date;sort -o bigfile.sor -T /workspace -y 1048576 bigfile;date
Tue Feb  8 12:25:47 GMT 2011
Tue Feb  8 12:28:10 GMT 2011

Dictionary sort:
date;sort -fd -o bigfile.sor -T /workspace -y 1048576 bigfile;date
Tue Feb  8 12:31:17 GMT 2011
Tue Feb  8 12:36:19 GMT 2011

Reverse sorting the output from the previous sort:
date;sort -r -fd -o bigfile.rev -T /workspace -y 1048576 bigfile.sor;date
Tue Feb  8 12:44:26 GMT 2011
Tue Feb  8 12:49:07 GMT 2011

Are you sure that you file is only 200 Mb ?

very strange! my data is like this :

pleasant 2
festive 2
period 2
i declare 2
declare resumed 2
resumed the 2
the session 2
session of 2
of the 2
the european 2

and sorting it takes much longer! I just tried this :
sort -o sorted -d -y 1048576 file

and after 10 mins still nothing happened! I wonder how could you do that such a fast way! my file is 150 mb with about 10m lines.