Emacs 21.4 maximum buffer size limit

Emacs 21.4 maximum buffer size limit

[void]

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Greetings,

This message concerns a "bug" in the latest version of Emacs (as well as all
previous ones). I find myself restricted with the current maximum-buffer
limit of GNU Emacs. Trying to edit a 264MB text file (data from a geophysics
simulation) is impossible without first splitting same file into multiple
pieces and later rejoining them. I'm aware that this limitation stems from
an inherent restriction of elisp, but I kindly request an ugly (or elegant,
if possible) hack for future versions of Emacs. Both vim and nano don't seem
to have such a low file-size restriction, and I've heard XEmacs can handle
text files up to 1GB in size. As much as I love working with GNU Emacs, I
really don't want to have to learn the arcane commands of vim to work with
files of such magnitude.

Thank you GNU.

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Re: Emacs 21.4 maximum buffer size limit

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 22:09:45 -0400
> From: void <system.void@gmail.com>
> 
> This message concerns a "bug" in the latest version of Emacs (as well as all
> previous ones). I find myself restricted with the current maximum-buffer
> limit of GNU Emacs. Trying to edit a 264MB text file (data from a geophysics
> simulation) is impossible without first splitting same file into multiple
> pieces and later rejoining them. I'm aware that this limitation stems from
> an inherent restriction of elisp, but I kindly request an ugly (or elegant,
> if possible) hack for future versions of Emacs. Both vim and nano don't seem
> to have such a low file-size restriction, and I've heard XEmacs can handle
> text files up to 1GB in size. As much as I love working with GNU Emacs, I
> really don't want to have to learn the arcane commands of vim to work with
> files of such magnitude.

The next version of Emacs will double its max buffer size to 256MB,
but 264MB will be still out of reach.

The usual solution to this problem is to build a 64-bit version of
Emacs (assuming you have a 64-bit host around).