2020年7月第4题 PAT甲级真题 Replacement Selection (30分)

When the input is much too large to fit into memory, we have to do external sorting instead of internal sorting. One of the key steps in external sorting is to generate sets of sorted records (also called runs) with limited internal memory. The simplest method is to read as many records as possible into the memory, and sort them internally, then write the resulting run back to some tape. The size of each run is the same as the capacity of the internal memory.

Replacement Selection sorting algorithm was described in 1965 by Donald Knuth. Notice that as soon as the first record is written to an output tape, the memory it used becomes available for another record. Assume that we are sorting in ascending order, if the next record is not smaller than the record we have just output, then it can be included in the run.

For example, suppose that we have a set of input { 81, 94, 11, 96, 12, 99, 35 }, and our memory can sort 3 records only. By the simplest method we will obtain three runs: { 11, 81, 94 }, { 12, 96, 99 } and { 35 }. According to the replacement selection algorithm, we would read and sort the first 3 records { 81, 94, 11 } and output 11 as the smallest one. Then one space is available so 96 is read in and will join the first run since it is larger than 11. Now we have { 81, 94, 96 }. After 81