sortX: Advanced file sorting component DLL for Visual Basic 6 | Visual Basic, VB, VB6, Sort, Sorter, Sorting, File, Data, Speed, Fast, QuickSort, PostMans, DFSORT, Combsort, dynasort, 2GB, Mainframe, Convert, Conversion, Delimited, Column, Bubble

QUESTIONS

What is language is SortX written in?
sortX is written in C++, Assembler with a few lines of VB "interface" code to manage the parameter validation.

How does it sort very large files?
sortX is a bit clever (we think) with the the way it uses the RAM on your PC. It reads in chunks of your input file at a time (with a single contiguous fast read) into RAM and sorts in memory accordingly with its fast sort algorithm. It then merges the chunks and 'builds' the output file accordingly. We use our own custom sort algorithm.

How does sortX deal with 'null' characters?
Null characters are notoriously difficult to deal with while sorting. sortX has an option that enables you to convert them to 'blanks' while it does the sort. Great for painful mainframe files where you really don't want the nulls.

How fast is sortX?
Very fast considering how much it costs! We have done various tests on our standard dell desktop pentium IIII 2.66 with 256 mb RAM. Here are some of the results to give you an idea:

1 milllion 50 byte records (a 50mb file) in around 12 seconds
1 milllion 100 byte records (a 100mb file) in around 21 seconds
1 milllion 500 byte records (a 1/2 GB file) in around 281 seconds

What is the biggest file I can sort?
Good question - theoretically 204,800,000,000,000,000 records. We have tested sortX with a 50GB file without problems; so we gurantee sortX for files up to 50GB until we get disk space to test further.

How can I improve sort speed even more?
You can set various parameters, including increasing the size of the memory sortX uses, and careful attention to the sort criteria to make sure you aren't sorting more of each record than you need to can make a huge difference. There are full examples of each sortX function and property setting in the Visual Basic sample module that forms part of the download on our download page.

How can I know how to use SortX? Is there any help?
sortX also has full online help when used in your projects, just highlight the appropriate sortX keyword and hit 'F1' in the normal manner. There is also a sample module provided in the download to give you a few code examples to get you started.

If you have a question which is not answered here, please email us, by clicking on the "Contact us" button, in the navigation bar.