----- Original Message -----
From: "michael brown" <spam-me@HOUSTON.RR.COM>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC:] Sorting through millions of numbers


> "Bob Ammerman" wrote:
>
>
> > Think 'hash table'
>
> I was thinking b-tree.
>
> michael brown

Generally 'hash table' is better than 'b-tree' unless you have a need for
in-order traversal of the data. By 'better', I mean that coding efforts are
_much_ simpler, and inserts and finds are faster. However, the 'b-tree' is
typically better at storage usage. That would probably not matter in this
application, since you'd need enough storage to hold the worst case data
anyway.

Bob Ammerman

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