Order of returned sequences?

[Brendan McKay]

* N. J. A. Sloane <njas at research.att.com> [040528 21:14]:
> here's how it works:
> 
> say you ask for N matching sequences (you can control
> this by using the advanced search page)
> 
> the program now finds all matching sequences, but stops
> after getting N 
> 
> these are now sorted into order of importance
> 
> [you might think the program would find ALL matching
> sequences, then sort them, then return the top N,
> but that is not feasible - think about it]
 
I thought about it and realised that if google worked that way
the results would be pretty useless as the best pages would
never be in the list before sorting.   Also, if the sequences
are examined always in the same order then later sequences
would rarely appear at all.

I guess there has to be some sanity limitations, by why can't
you score all the sequences while keeping the best N so far?

Brendan.