[OT] Finding longest documents

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>    nil '(("\\(!(\\)[^()]*\\()\\)"
> 
> I guess this is why I don't use emacs. I don't want to hear any more 
> grousing about !( ) after that!!!

I agree about that, but why don't you use std.algorithm? :o)

Speaking of which, here's another challenge for everybody who'd like to 
waste some cycles.

Say you have a simple API for accessing a large collection of files - 
e.g. all of Google's cached documents. The task, should you accept it, 
is to find the 1,000,000 largest ones of those files. The output should 
be filenames sorted in decreasing order of size. Assume the API gives 
you <filename, size> pairs in a serial fashion. You can't use parallel 
processing (e.g. map/reduce on clusters), but you are allowed to use 
threads on one machine if if fancies you. Speed is highly desirable. 
Devise your algorithm and explain how fast it runs with practical and/or 
theoretical arguments.


Andrei