Patent ID: 6950652

Claim:
A method of accessing a telephone address book from a remote electronic device using an enhanced hash table to organize a local data structure on a local electronic device so as to provide alphanumeric scrolling, searching and sorted access to records in an unsorted data structure on the remote electronic device without making a physical copy of the remote data structure on the local device and in a manner which minimizes a local memory requirement and minimizes access to the remote device, the method comprising the steps of: providing a data table of a finite length including a predetermined number of alphanumeric slots wherein each slot includes a predetermined number of cells for storage of index values corresponding to records based upon their alphanumerical properties; providing a predetermined number of slots designated as free slots wherein each free slot includes a predetermined number of cells for storage of index values corresponding to records; reading records stored in the remote device; generating an index value corresponding to each record in the remote device; alphanumerically sorting entries and storing each index value in a cell within the appropriate alphanumerical slot; whereby the index values serve as pointers to the records stored in the remote electronic device thereby omitting the need to store the entire record; and sorting entries and storing an index value in said free slots when all said cells within an alphanumerical slot are full.