Workfile

During a sort or merge operation, mfsort uses a temporary workfile. This workfile is paged to disk in the current directory or, if it is set, in the directory specified by the TMP or TEMP environment variable. If not set, the current working directory is used.

Mfsort copies all the records from each of the input files to the temporary workfile, truncated or padded as appropriate. The workfile is then sorted or merged according to its key description. After being sorted or merged in the workfile, the records are copied to each of the output files and truncated or padded as appropriate.

During this operation: