Given a file, find the ten most frequently occurring words as efficiently as possible

Question

This is apparently an interview question (found it in a collection of interview questions), but even if it\'s not it\'s pretty cool.

We are told to do this efficien

Answer 1

I think this is a typical application of counting sort since the sum of occurrences of each word is equal to the total number of words. A hash table with a counting sort should do the job in a time proportional to the number of words.