shj@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Steve Jay) (12/17/88)
cvalcour@fester.prime.com (Chris Valcourt):
> Also - has anyone ever seen the algorithm for a Booster Ferdonic Sort.
I suspect what's desired here is a "boustrophedonic" sort. Boustrophedon
is defined in my dictionary as:
[Gk boustrouphedon, adv., lit., turning like oxen in plowing]: of
or relating to the writing of alternate lines in opposite directions.
I'm not up on sort algorithms, but I think this may hark back to the days
of sorting with scratch files on mag tapes, where reading a file
backwards, using reverse read on the drive, could save time over waiting
for the drive to rewind. I have no idea if this has any applicability to
modern sorting methods.
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