Operating System Multi-Process Sorting App

This is a short application made with C programming language, that its goal is to sort the records inside a specific file, and to print them to the tty terminal. The sorting process though is a little different from the usual ones. The real goal of the application is to test multi-process executing the OS provides, and to combine this idea with the first goal, to sort different files of records using multi-sorting strategy.

How to download the application

To download the application you can either download the zip file containing all the code and data files, or clone its url using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/AntonisZks/Multi-Process-Sorting.git

How to run the application

When you have downloaded the application, open up a tty terminal, locate the directory containing the application and execute the following commands:

make all
make run_test

On that moment if a list of records has appeared on the tty, then everything worked fine, and you are ready to play with the application.

Important

Because of the fact that this application uses specific Linux libraries and functions, the compilation of the program will work only on an Ubuntu Linux Operating System.

How the application works

The general execute command of the application is the following:

./bin/mysort -i <data-filename> -k <number-of-sub-processes> -e1 <sorting-algorithm-1> -e2 <sorting-algorithm-2>

where each of the above is descibed below:

• The main process of the application is called Coordinator-Spliter and Merger-Reporter and its main job is to take a specific file of records that need to be sorted, and split the sorting process into a specific number of sub-processes.
• Each of the sub-processes' name is Work-Spliter and Result-Merger and they have to sort a specific range of records inside the file. This range of records for each Work-Spliter has been approved by the parent process, the Coordinator-Spliter.

Note

For example if the number of records is n, and the sub-processes are k, then each Sub-Process has to sort n/k records.

• Although the spiting is not done yet. Every Work-Spliter splits its sorting process into individual sub-processes. So now the root process has sub-sub-processes called Sorters. Every sorter has a specific range of records inside the file to sort and that has been approved by its parent process the Work-Spliter in the same way that was described above.

Note

Every Work-Spliter has a specific number of sub-processes. If the number of Work-Spliters is k then the first one will have k child-processes, the second one will have k-2, the third one k-3, ... , and the k-th one will have 1 child-process.