Fastest way to obtain the largest X numbers from a very large unsorted list?

Question

I\'m trying to obtain the top say, 100 scores from a list of scores being generated by my program. Unfortuatly the list is huge (on the order of millions to billions) so sorting

Answer 1

1. take the first 100 scores, and sort them in an array.
2. take the next score, and insertion-sort it into the array (starting at the "small" end)
3. drop the 101st value
4. continue with the next value, at 2, until done

Over time, the list will resemble the 100 largest value more and more, so more often, you find that the insertion sort immediately aborts, finding that the new value is smaller than the smallest value of the candidates for the top 100.