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EASYSORT.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1992
Software described here is now public domain and
available from the Lima User Group (May 1995)
--------------------------
"EASY SORT"
ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE SORTING OF XB DATA STATEMENTS
reviewed by Charles Good
Lima Ohio User Group
Many of us have our favorate extended basic
name/address program, or household inventory program, or
other "list of things" program. There are lots of these
floating around in the TI community and the nice thing about
them is that, since they are in XB, the inexperienced user
can modify them to the user's particular requirements.
These programs either load in a separate data file to sort
and display or they contain their data in XB data
statements. Many "only know how to program in XB" users use
data statements in such software. The advantage of using
data statements is that the data is loaded into the computer
just as fast as the controlling program. There is no need
to spend time loading the program and then loading a data
file. One disadvantage of data statements is the haphazard
unsorted order that the data is usually entered into the
program. New data, irrespective of alphabetical or
numerical order, is usually added after all the existing
data statements. Reading all this data into memory and
sorting it in XB takes alot of time.
Bruce Harrison to the rescue! Bruce sent me an
evaluation copy of a new commerical offering which sorts
data in data statements FAST. No assembly language
knowledge is needed, just use the SKELETON program or add
the appropriate CALL LINK to your own software. SKELETON is
very flexible. Many different kinds of data can be stored
with a neat menu poping up at the start of SKELETON showing
what the data is (video tapes, names and addresses,
household inventory, etc). DATA statements can be part of
the program, MERGEd into the program, or loaded in from a
separate disk file.
Bruce's disk includes a demo name/address program that
contains the addresses of many prominant personalities in
the TI community. The demo program itself is REALLY NEAT
with quick sorting by first or last name, street address,
city, state, or zip code. The list of TI personality's
addresses is in and of itself useful to owners of TI home
computers.
Below are excerpts from the letter from Bruce that
accompanied my evaluation copy of EASY DATA:
"Here's our latest commercial offering, a little goodie
we call EASY DATA. It's for unskilled XB programmers, so
they can do great things with DATA statements and a little
help from Harrison's Assenmbly routines.
"The package sells for $6.00 including S&H for US and
Canada customers. Its main ingredient is a routine called
MSORT, which is supplied buried in the XB program SKELETON.
That XB program also contains a slightly upgraded version of
our Menu Driver (QMENU), so the unskilled programmer can
make nice looking menus from simple DATA statements.
"MSORT is a magical routine in many ways. It performs
sorts by any two fields in the data, as designated in the
LINK statement. The kind of sort performed (Numeric or
String) is determined by the kind of variable that the field
being sorted reports into. It does not waste time on the
secondary sort unless the primary sort is a tie.
"Three demos are provided. The one called BIGDEMO
sorts 55 records of six fields each on two criteria in a bit
over three seconds. [Charles Good note: BIGDEMO is the
name/address demo mentioned by me above.]... The time
required to sort is essentially insensitive to the original
ordering of the data. Lists that are almost in order take
no less time than lists that are completely reversed."
Harrison Software
5705 40th Place
Hyattsville MD 20781
301-277-3467