Top N Numbers

The problem is:

Given an arbitrarily large file and a number,  N , containing individual numbers on each line (e.g. 200Gb file), will output the largest  N  numbers, highest first. Analyse the run time/space complexity of your approach.

The intuitive method for the top- N  is to sort all numbers first, and then return the first/last  N  numbers. However, the time complexity of sorting is usually  O(nlogn) , and when the data are very big, it is impossible to do the sorting in memory directly.

- See more at: http://bo-yang.github.io/2014/06/29/top-n-numbers/#sthash.L1exrLoX.dpuf

http://bo-yang.github.io/2014/06/29/top-n-numbers