Patent ID: 7289991
Filing Date: 2007-10-30
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An apparatus to sort character representations of data, the apparatus comprising: an identity module configured to identify character-encoded sort data values in a plurality of data lines of a data set wherein each data line has one sort data value, the sort data values comprising a character representation of hexadecimal fixed-digit numeric data encoded according to an Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code set such that each character digit in the character representation corresponds to a hexadecimal numeric digit, wherein the sort data values comprise fixed-digit sequential data; a conversion module configured to convert the sort data values from the character representation to hexadecimal fixed-digit numeric data and append a cycle number to the sort data value as a most significant value, the cycle number representative of a subsequent set of sequential data for which the value is greater than sequential data within a previous set of sequential data such that the sort data values wrap, the sets of sequential data defined by the fixed-digit size of the sort data value; and a sort module configured to sort the data lines using the converted sort data and render the sorted data lines on an output device.