FastSort Manual

Sorting Programmatically

FastSort Manual—429834-003

4-5

Sending Records to Be Sorted

To use SORTMERGESEND for a sort run, you must specify the following values in the

call to SORTMERGESTART:



1 for the num-sort-files parameter



Blanks for the input-file-name parameter

Sending Records to Be Merged

To use SORTMERGESEND for a merge run, you must specify the following in the call

to SORTMERGESTART:



A number from 2 to 32 for the num-merge-files parameter



From 2 to 32 names of all blanks for the input-file-name parameter

SORTPROG can merge multiple sets of records sent from a calling process. In this

operation, the term input stream refers to a source of sorted records for merging. The

number of input streams for merging is the number of merge files you specify in the call

to SORTMERGESTART. SORTPROG merges the sorted records from all input

streams into a single set of output records.

You can send records from the input streams to SORTPROG through

SORTMERGESEND. The first call to SORTMERGESEND transmits a record from

stream 0. Then SORTPROG returns a number in the stream-id parameter of

SORTMERGESEND to indicate the input stream from which the next record should

come. After SORTMERGESEND transmits all records from the input streams,

SORTPROG merges the records and returns them to the calling process or produces

the output file.

Record blocking is valid only for sort runs. If you try to use record blocking with merge

runs, SORTPROG returns error 81 (BLOCKED INTERFACE NOT ALLOWED WITH

MERGE).

Figure 4-2

on page 4-6 shows how SORTPROG accepts input records from an

application process.