Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhc!hpsemc!gph
From: gph@hpsemc.HP.COM (Paul Houtz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: sorting and reversing lines of a file
Message-ID: <810031@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Jan 89 22:04:07 GMT
References: <9056@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Organization: HP Technology Access Center, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 14

gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) writes:

>	pr -n9 -t | sort +0nr -1 | cut -f2-
>
>Sorting isn't the most efficient way to do this task, but it's easy
>to implement this way.  If you have a LOT of file reversing to do,
>then probably a real software engineering task should be undertaken.
----------

Umm, please explain why sorting isn't the most eficient way to do
this.

Is there a rapid way to begin reading at the end of a file in Unix?
If not, then wouldn't a sort be just as fast as any other way?