Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Lying
Message-ID: <6097@lanl.gov>
Date: 16 Nov 90 00:36:44 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 24

A certain other contributor to this newsgroup claims to have _never_
asserted that sorting could be done in linear time _without_ mentioning
it was linear in the number of bytes and not the number of keys.
This was the _original_ remark that I referred to when I mentioned
the issue to begin with:

  > (Actually, you might speed the _test_ up by sorting the addresses of all
  > potentially aliased objects and then moving through the sorted list and
  > comparing adjacent items.  This is still _at_least_ N*log(N).

  Great, now you don't even know how to sort a collection of numbers in
  linear time.

This was a direct quote from an email message dated 23 Jul, 1990.
The person who sent the message challenged me to find any quote that
he made of the above variety.  I took that as implicit permission to
quote private mail communications over the net.

As usual, I don't expect _any_ apology (or indeed, any response at all)
from the other party to this travesty.  _I_ apologise to all the other
readers of the net for ever having responded to the person in question
at all.

J. Giles