>> char vs[1002000][99]; In the file 1001622(or so) records like phone number + f/l names. So the reserving makes sense, i think. Populating of vector<string> is by zillion times slower.
>> Is there an implementation of f.readlines on the internet somewhere? I was greatly surprised how fast it is. As a matter of fact, it's the point of my message here. >> BTW why are you declaring the array as 99 and pass 999 to fgets to read a line? It doesn't matter. All the same, reading of a current line stopped at '\n'. Big number 999(9999,99999,...) just ensures that each line is read up to its end. >> fgets is part of the standard C++ library and it lives in the std namespace. I thought it's from <stdio.h>. Anyway, it does not matter. PS Thanx for the code. 2All: Origin of my "discovery" is from http://www.spoj.pl/ranks/SBANK/start=400 I never thought it can be done in Python (there are a couple of Py solutions even faster than mine) and without stuff like radix sort etc. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
