管理一个单独的列表是额外的工作，每次你找到另一个替代物时，你都必须在整个列表中移动东西。把它排序，选前100名。

受@ron teller回答的启发，这里有一个简单的C程序来做你想做的事情。

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#define TOTAL_NUMBERS 1000000000
#define N_TOP_NUMBERS 100

int 
compare_function(const void *first, const void *second)
{
    int a = *((int *) first);
    int b = *((int *) second);
    if (a > b){
        return 1;
    }
    if (a < b){
        return -1;
    }
    return 0;
}

int 
main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
    if(argc != 2){
        printf("please supply a path to a binary file containing 1000000000"
               "integers of this machine's wordlength and endianness\n");
        exit(1);
    }
    FILE * f = fopen(argv[1], "r");
    if(!f){
        exit(1);
    }
    int top100[N_TOP_NUMBERS] = {0};
    int sorts = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < TOTAL_NUMBERS; i++){
        int number;
        int ok;
        ok = fread(&number, sizeof(int), 1, f);
        if(!ok){
            printf("not enough numbers!\n");
            break;
        }
        if(number > top100[0]){
            sorts++;
            top100[0] = number;
            qsort(top100, N_TOP_NUMBERS, sizeof(int), compare_function);
        }

    }
    printf("%d sorts made\n"
    "the top 100 integers in %s are:\n",
    sorts, argv[1] );
    for (int i = 0; i < N_TOP_NUMBERS; i++){
        printf("%d\n", top100[i]);
    }
    fclose(f);
    exit(0);
}

在我的机器上(具有快速SSD的core i3)，它需要25秒，并进行1724种排序。 我用dd if=/dev/urandom/ count=1000000000 bs=1生成了一个二进制文件。

显然，一次只从磁盘读取4个字节会有性能问题，但这只是为了举例。好的一面是，只需要很少的内存。

我做了我自己的代码，不确定它是否是“面试官”所寻找的

private static final int MAX=100;
 PriorityQueue<Integer> queue = new PriorityQueue<>(MAX);
        queue.add(array[0]);
        for (int i=1;i<array.length;i++)
        {

            if(queue.peek()<array[i])
            {
                if(queue.size() >=MAX)
                {
                    queue.poll();
                }
                queue.add(array[i]);

            }

        }

The simplest solution is to scan the billion numbers large array and hold the 100 largest values found so far in a small array buffer without any sorting and remember the smallest value of this buffer. First I thought this method was proposed by fordprefect but in a comment he said that he assumed the 100 number data structure being implemented as a heap. Whenever a new number is found that is larger then the minimum in the buffer is overwritten by the new value found and the buffer is searched for the current minimum again. If the numbers in billion number array are randomly distributed most of the time the value from the large array is compared to the minimum of the small array and discarded. Only for a very very small fraction of number the value must be inserted into the small array. So the difference of manipulating the data structure holding the small numbers can be neglected. For a small number of elements it is hard to determine if the usage of a priority queue is actually faster than using my naive approach.

I want to estimate the number of inserts in the small 100 element array buffer when the 10^9 element array is scanned. The program scans the first 1000 elements of this large array and has to insert at most 1000 elements in the buffer. The buffer contains 100 element of the 1000 elements scanned, that is 0.1 of the element scanned. So we assume that the probability that a value from the large array is larger than the current minimum of the buffer is about 0.1 Such an element has to be inserted in the buffer . Now the program scans the next 10^4 elements from the large array. Because the minimum of the buffer will increase every time a new element is inserted. We estimated that the ratio of elements larger than our current minimum is about 0.1 and so there are 0.1*10^4=1000 elements to insert. Actually the expected number of elements that are inserted into the buffer will be smaller. After the scan of this 10^4 elements fraction of the numbers in the buffer will be about 0.01 of the elements scanned so far. So when scanning the next 10^5 numbers we assume that not more than 0.01*10^5=1000 will be inserted in the buffer. Continuing this argumentation we have inserted about 7000 values after scanning 1000+10^4+10^5+...+10^9 ~ 10^9 elements of the large array. So when scanning an array with 10^9 elements of random size we expect not more than 10^4 (=7000 rounded up) insertions in the buffer. After each insertion into the buffer the new minimum must be found. If the buffer is a simple array we need 100 comparison to find the new minimum. If the buffer is another data structure (like a heap) we need at least 1 comparison to find the minimum. To compare the elements of the large array we need 10^9 comparisons. So all in all we need about 10^9+100*10^4=1.001 * 10^9 comparisons when using an array as buffer and at least 1.000 * 10^9 comparisons when using another type of data structure (like a heap). So using a heap brings only a gain of 0.1% if performance is determined by the number of comparison. But what is the difference in execution time between inserting an element in a 100 element heap and replacing an element in an 100 element array and finding its new minimum?

在理论层面:在堆中插入需要多少比较。我知道它是O(log(n))但常数因子有多大呢?我 在机器级别:缓存和分支预测对堆插入和数组中线性搜索的执行时间有什么影响? 在实现级别:库或编译器提供的堆数据结构中隐藏了哪些额外成本?

我认为，在人们试图估计100个元素堆和100个元素数组的性能之间的真正区别之前，这些都是必须回答的一些问题。所以做一个实验并测量真实的表现是有意义的。

 Although in this question we should search for top 100 numbers, I will 
 generalize things and write x. Still, I will treat x as constant value.

n中最大的x元素:

我将调用返回值LIST。它是一个x元素的集合(在我看来应该是链表)

First x elements are taken from pool "as they come" and sorted in LIST (this is done in constant time since x is treated as constant - O( x log(x) ) time) For every element that comes next we check if it is bigger than smallest element in LIST and if is we pop out the smallest and insert current element to LIST. Since that is ordered list every element should find its place in logarithmic time (binary search) and since it is ordered list insertion is not a problem. Every step is also done in constant time ( O(log(x) ) time ).

那么，最坏的情况是什么?

xlog(x)+(n-x)(log(x)+1)=nlog(x)+n- x

最坏情况是O(n)时间。+1是检查数字是否大于LIST中最小的数字。平均情况的预期时间将取决于这n个元素的数学分布。

可能的改进

在最坏的情况下，这个算法可以稍微改进，但恕我直言(我无法证明这一点)，这会降低平均行为。渐近行为是一样的。

该算法的改进在于，我们将不检查元素是否大于最小值。对于每个元素，我们将尝试插入它，如果它小于最小值，我们将忽略它。尽管如果我们只考虑我们将面临的最坏的情况，这听起来很荒谬

x log（x） + （n-x）log（x） = nlog（x）

操作。

对于这个用例，我没有看到任何进一步的改进。但是你必须问自己，如果我要对不同的x做多于log(n)次呢?显然，我们会以O(nlog (n))为单位对数组进行排序，并在需要时提取x元素。

两个选择:

(1)堆(priorityQueue)

维护最小堆的大小为100。遍历数组。一旦元素小于堆中的第一个元素，就替换它。

InSERT ELEMENT INTO HEAP: O（log100）
compare the first element: O(1)
There are n elements in the array, so the total would be O(nlog100), which is O(n)

(2)映射-约简模型。

这与hadoop中的单词计数示例非常相似。 映射工作:计算每个元素出现的频率或次数。 减约:获取顶部K元素。

通常，我会给招聘人员两个答案。他们喜欢什么就给什么。当然，映射缩减编码会很费事，因为您必须知道每个确切的参数。练习一下也无妨。 祝你好运。