New merge sorting techniques

Abstract

The new method uses n-1 initial data tapes and one tape originally free of data. (n~l)-way merging is performed until the data on one tape is exhausted; now (n-2)-way merging is performed until the data on the next tape is exhausted~ and this process is continued until the last two passes are two-way merging and a copying pass respectively° By a proper initial choice of the distribution of number of strings on (n-l) tapes~ this process can be made self-perpetuating (except for small corrections). In the particular case of 3 tapes, the length of the longest string is given by the well known Fibonacci sequence,