Re: No merge sort?

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 10:43:30PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Sure.  That's why we have a planner that distinguishes between startup
> cost and total cost, and interpolates when a LIMIT is involved.  But
> if this mergesort idea only helps for small-limit cases, that's another
> restriction on its scope of usefulness...

I don't think so, since even in the non-limit case it avoids having to
do a full sort if the number of initial streams is finite and small (as
in the case I demonstrated), reducing time complexity to O(N).

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