> I've been thinking about how you'd go about efficiently sorting data 
> stored on magnetic tape.
>
> The key thing about tape is that it's sequential. We'll also assume that 
> it holds more data than you can actually fit into main memory, as was the 
> case in the days of old.

If you haven't already, you could code a simple "tape drive simulator" to 
test all your ideas...

Depending on what type of data you want to sort and the seeking 
characteristics of a tape drive, a radix sort might work quite well.  Just 
an idea.

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