Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

[Michael Mueller]

I often use emacs to examine large log files (may be 10 MB). Sometimes I want to extract
a part of such a file for further investigation, for example, I am in the middle
of the file and want to delete the rest. When I just jump to the end and then delete the
region using C-W, emacs hangs. I assume emacs has problems saving such a large portion
of text in the kill ring and it would come back if I would wait for some minutes or maybe
hours, which I don't want to do. Even C-g won't interupt this. The only thing I can do
is kill emacs from the shell.

Is there a way to delete large portions of text from large files quickly?

Thanks

Michael

Re: Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

[Kai Großjohann]

Michael Mueller <michael_p_mueller@agilent.com> writes:

> I often use emacs to examine large log files (may be 10 MB). Sometimes
> I want to extract a part of such a file for further investigation, for
> example, I am in the middle of the file and want to delete the
> rest. When I just jump to the end and then delete the region using
> C-W, emacs hangs.

Maybe it's the X cut buffer (X selection?) interaction?  You could
try to frob the variables interporgram-cut-function and
interprogram-paste-function.

-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

Re: Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

[Joshua D. Guttman]

Michael Mueller <michael_p_mueller@agilent.com> writes:

>   When I just jump to the end and then delete the
>   region using C-W, emacs hangs. 

Oh, for this you definitely want to use M-x delete-region 
which does not put anything on the kill ring or x clipboard.  

        Joshua 

delete-region is an interactive built-in function.
(delete-region START END)

Delete the text between point and mark.
When called from a program, expects two arguments,
positions (integers or markers) specifying the stretch to be deleted.
-- 
	Joshua D. Guttman		<guttman@mitre.org> 
	MITRE, Mail Stop S119		Office:	+1 781 271 2654
	202 Burlington Rd.		Cell:	+1 781 526 5713
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Re: Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

[Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>]

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Mueller <michael_p_mueller@agilent.com> writes:
> I often use emacs to examine large log files (may be 10
> MB). Sometimes I want to extract a part of such a file for further
> investigation, for example, I am in the middle of the file and want to
> delete the rest. When I just jump to the end and then delete the region
> using C-W, emacs hangs. I assume emacs has problems saving such a large
> portion of text in the kill ring and it would come back if I would wait
> for some minutes or maybe hours, which I don't want to do. Even C-g won't
> interupt this. The only thing I can do is kill emacs from the shell.

Which version of Emacs is that ?

Check the PROBLEMS file, it has something about the X cut-buffer and some
clipboard that ends up freezing Emacs if you cut more than a few hundred
chars at a time.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs hangs when deleting a large portion of text in a large file

[Pavel Janík]

   From: Michael Mueller <michael_p_mueller@agilent.com>
   Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 10:30:08 +0100

   > I often use emacs to examine large log files (may be 10 MB). Sometimes
   > I want to extract a part of such a file for further investigation, for

Do you use KDE? Kill klipper.
-- 
Pavel Janík

So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing
russian rulette with their backups.
                  -- Linus Torvalds in linux-kernel