Sorting 1 million 8-decimal-digit numbers with 1 MB of RAM

Question

I have a computer with 1 MB of RAM and no other local storage. I must use it to accept 1 million 8-digit decimal numbers over a TCP connection, sort them, and then send the

Answer 1

You just need to store the differences between the numbers in sequence, and use an encoding to compress these sequence numbers. We have 2^23 bits. We shall divide it into 6bit chunks, and let the last bit indicate whether the number extends to another 6 bits (5bits plus extending chunk).

Thus, 000010 is 1, and 000100 is 2. 000001100000 is 128. Now, we consider the worst cast in representing differences in sequence of a numbers up to 10,000,000. There can be 10,000,000/2^5 differences greater than 2^5, 10,000,000/2^10 differences greater than 2^10, and 10,000,000/2^15 differences greater than 2^15, etc.

So, we add how many bits it will take to represent our the sequence. We have 1,000,000*6 + roundup(10,000,000/2^5)*6+roundup(10,000,000/2^10)*6+roundup(10,000,000/2^15)*6+roundup(10,000,000/2^20)*4=7935479.

2^24 = 8388608. Since 8388608 > 7935479, we should easily have enough memory. We will probably need another little bit of memory to store the sum of where are when we insert new numbers. We then go through the sequence, and find where to insert our new number, decrease the next difference if necessary, and shift everything after it right.