Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful with
> >> so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most of
> >> the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
> >
> > Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of
> > today. :)
>
> Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few
> thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to
> process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and
> feeding them through a computer. So it must have been possible to
> process larger datasets than that somehow.

You never read the entire dataset into memory. You process it a record at a
time.
The only limit on file size is the media, not memory.  There is no difference in
memory consumption between processing 10 records or 10 million records.

>
> > see the revolution that were programs like ed (and its successor vi) in
> > bringing flexible terminal text editing rather than wasting tons of
> > paper... :)
>
> ...not to mention card...
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Isaac

Post a reply to this message