CHAPTER 14
Sorting and Merging
If there is one thing you should have learned from the chapters on sequential files, it is that your processing options are very limited if a sequential file is not ordered. Solutions based on control breaks, and the file-update problem, are impossible unless the file is ordered on some key field. In previous chapters, I mentioned the very useful program design technique called beneficial wishful thinking in which, when you are confronted by a difficult programming problem, you imagine a set of circumstances under which the difficulty would be greatly reduced and then try to bring about that set of circumstances. ...
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