3 ms·
Right, but sort is apparently clever enough to do a disk-backed mergesort on a file (according to timr's comment), but it doesn't get a chance to recognize that
by jey 16y ago
Right, but sort is apparently clever enough to do a disk-backed mergesort on a file (according to timr's comment), but it doesn't get a chance to recognize that you're sorting a file if you just pipe in the data.
- ori_b 16y agoI believe it uses scratch space in /tmp to do it if you pipe it in. (The manpage says that it allows you to specify an alternative temporary directory than $TMPDIR, however)
- jemfinch 16y agoWhy did you get modded up? You're wrong. Sort will write temporary files to /tmp if you exceed its in-memory sort threshold. Did you really think sort(1) just bails if you pipe it more data than can be contained in memory?