This page contains answers to common questions handled by our support staff, along with some tips and tricks that we have found useful and presented here as questions.

Note: In these answers we will follow a few shorthand conventions for describing user-interface procedures. Key combinations will be presented like this: Ctrl+Alt+Delete, which means that you should press and hold down the Control key, the Alt key, and the Delete key at the same time. Menu selections will be presented like this: File->Open, which means that you should open the File menu, and then make the Open selection.

1. How do I Install LSORT 4.05?
2. Where can I find documentation ?
3. What is the difference between the GUI version and the command line version of LSORT?
4. If you believe that LSORT Year 2000 compliant, why don't you warrant Year 2000 compliance?
5. What types of fields does LSORT/LSRT know about?
6. What is the difference between LSORT and LSRT?
7. What are the limitations of LSORT / LSRT?

Download LSORT405.EXE to a temporary directory.  Run LSORT405.EXE either from a command window or using the Start-Run command.  The LSORT installation utility will then install LSORT for you in a directory of your choice.

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LSORT documentation can be found in the following files:  LSORT405.TXT, LSORT32.TXT, LSORTNT.TXT and LSRTNT.TXT.  You can also see the documentation by clicking the help button on when running the GUI interface.

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The GUI version of LSORT, LSORT32.EXE, is a Visual Basic 5 program that acts as a front end to LSORT.  It collects all of the information needed to sort a file, saves the information on your hard drive and then calls the command line utility, LSORTNT.EXE to actually sort the file. 

The GUI interface can only define 15 sort fields, while the command line program can define 31.

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LSORT is a shareware program published by London Computing, which is a very small consulting company.  Although we have done Year 2000 testing and believe that the program will work properly, we do not have the manpower or financial resources to provide any type of warranty for LSORT other than using our best efforts to correct any problems that are found.

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LSORT 4.05 Sort fields may be:

• Case independant character strings,
• Case dependant character strings,
• Numbers stored as character strings,
• 2 byte binary integers(Intel Format)
• 4 byte binary integers (Intel Format)
• 4 byte IEEE floating point numbers,
• 8 byte IEEE floating point numbers,
• xBase Logical fields (True/False fields),
• IBM Mainframe style binary integers,
• IBM Mainframe style packed decimal numbers.
• Y2K Compliant 2 position year field.
• Y2K Compliant mm/dd/yy date field.
• Y2K Compliant dd/mm/yy date field.
• Y2K Compliant yy/mm/dd date field.
• mm/dd/yyyy date field.
• dd/mm/yyyy date field.
• yyyy/mm/dd date field.

LSRTNT Sort fields may be:

• Case independant character strings,
• Case dependant character strings,

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LSORT is a full featured Sort/Merge program.  It reads data from one or more input files, writes output to a single output file and, if the file to be sorted are very large, may create temporary work files.  Very large files are sorted in pieces and then merged back together.

LSORT also can deal with a large variety of file types:

• Text Files
• Delimitted Files -- Any character can be used as a delimiter.
• Files containing Fixed Length Records.
• xBase format databases (DBF files).

LSORT can define many different field types.  See the previous FAQ for a listing.

LSRT has far fewer features.  It is a filter instead of a full blown application.   It reads that that has been redirected from standard input and writes data to standart output.  It can only sort files that will fit into memory and can only deal with text or delimited files.  It can only sort on character fields.

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LSORT 4.05 has the following limitations:

• Maximum Record Size -- 4096 bytes
• Maximum File Size -- RAM / Disk dependent.  Any file larger than physical memory will require free hard disk space equal to 4 times the file size.
• Maximum Number of Fields for sorting:
  • 15 When using the GUI interface.
  • 32 When using the Command Line interface.

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