Leo Butler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > < Paul Eggert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > < ... > < > Hmm, it sounds like your input data has some very long lines, then. > < > That would explain at least part of your problem, then. 'sort' needs > < > to keep at least two lines in main memory to compare them: if single > < > input lines are many gigabytes long, then 'sort' must consume many > < > gigabytes of memory, regardless of what parameter you specify with '-S'. > < > < You can run this to find the maximum line length: > < > < wc --max-line-length your-data ... > $ /usr/bin/wc -L /data/espace/k_400_a.out > 107
That would have worked if your data really did have the form you originally described. With binary data, you have be careful. E.g., translate all non-printable/space bytes to "." before using wc -L: tr -c '[:print:][:space:]' '[.*]' < your-data | wc -L _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
