NGSort  -  Internet NewsGroup Sorter

by Alan Wrigley

NGSort is a small application designed to make it easier for you to maintain an up-to-date list of Internet newsgroups. Lists can be downloaded from the Internet, and you can receive updates each time you log on, but eventually you get a whole lot of files, each containing newsgroups in no particular order, and with many duplicate listings. You can merge these files every now and then to make a definitive list, but the groups will not then be ordered alphabetically, and there may be duplicates.

This is where NGSort comes in. Dragging a text file full of newsgroups to NGSort's icon will arrange the list in alphabetical order and weed out any duplicates. In fact, the program will do this for any text file containing text strings, so it could be useful in other circumstances as well.

If your newsgroup files are very long, and if the items in the file are in no particular order, it can take quite a while to sort, even on a Risc PC (e.g. 20-30 minutes for a file containing 10000 items). You should only need to sort your newsgroups occasionally, and it's probably a good idea to go off and have a few cups of tea while the program gets on with its work.

 
 Copyright RISC User Magazine 1995