Re: opening large files (few hundred meg)

[Samuel Karl Peterson <skpeterson@nospam.please.ucdavis.edu>]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:08:42 +1100 didst
step forth and proclaim thus:

> However, it seems rediculous to attempt to open a text file of the
> size Xah is talking about inside an editor. Like others, I have to
> wonder why his log file isn't rotated more often so that it is in
> manageable chunks. Its obvious that nobody would read all of a text
> file that was that large (especially not every week). More than
> likely, you would use existing tools to select 'interesting' parts
> of the log and then deal with them. Personally, I'd use something
> like Perl or one of the many other scripting languages that are
> ideal for (and largely designed for) this sort of problem.

Funny enough, as other people have said, while it's not a common use
case, it happens and it can be useful to use something like an editor
because you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

I have been an ardent Emacs user for a number of years, but I gotta
say, this is one of the few things Vim really does "right".  They even
have plugins to help with the process:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1506

I've never had any difficulty working on huge binary files with Vim.

There are plenty of other applications that make the efficient ability
to work with enormous files highly desirable.  Emacs' hexl-mode and
tar file mode come immediately to mind.

The fact that other people have done it, that the Emacs community
brags that there's nothing Emacs can't do or be used for and that this
has been something that I have know that Emacs hasn't been able to do
for as long as I can remember...well, it just ought to come across as
a little bit embarassing to the Emacs devs.  Just a smidgin.

-- 
Sam Peterson
skpeterson At nospam ucdavis.edu
"if programmers were paid to remove code instead of adding it,
software would be much better" -- unknown