psort

Psort is a name used by several software projects, most commonly for a parallel sorting tool designed for Unix-like systems. The intent behind the project is to speed up the sorting of large text and data files by leveraging multiple CPU cores while maintaining compatibility with standard sort semantics used in Unix environments.

In typical use, Psort reads input from files or standard input and outputs sorted data to standard output or to a specified file. Implementations usually offer options for numeric sorts, reverse ordering, and sorting by a specific key or column, along with controls for memory usage and the degree of parallelism. To handle datasets larger than available RAM, Psort commonly uses external sorting techniques with temporary disk storage and a streaming pipeline to minimize intermediate data.

The term Psort can refer to different software efforts in various contexts, though PSORT is the established acronym in bioinformatics for tools that predict protein subcellular localization; Psort should not be confused with PSORT. Variants or similarly named projects may exist in unrelated domains, and the exact features and interfaces can vary between releases.

See also: sort (Unix command), PSORT, parallel sorting, external sorting.