Best editor for massive text files?

Cotton · 2008-03-18 19:34:26

Whats the best open source editor for viewing/editing a 500 MB ascii text file on a system with 256 MB of RAM and no swap?

I need to be able to rapidly move around the file without waiting for the whole thing to load.

And it would be good if the application was also available for windows.

finferflu · 2008-03-18 19:36:14

Vim comes to mind... It's light and fast if you want, it's available on Windows as well, but remember that 500 MB are quite a lot...

Majorix · 2008-03-18 19:54:13

Some GUI'less editor, like vim or nano.

F · 2008-03-18 20:06:16

surprisingly vim will probably be slow here. I would actually try to use vi here instead if possible. If that is too slow perhaps nano. But sacrificing vi's magic for nano's blandness will come at a price if you are doing lots of edits.

elgatofelix · 2008-03-19 02:47:03

-joe's own editor
-i would recomend code-browser (GUI but light) it can handle lots of files without penalty

schivmeister · 2008-03-19 10:58:52

nano and vim would be dead slow..I've got 2GB memory and I don't know why editing 150MB text files causes epic lags.

nDray · 2008-03-19 11:03:57

perhaps the file could be split in 10mb parts, or so, then merged again.....?

finferflu · 2008-03-19 11:13:52

How does Emacs behave with huge files? I have used it for a while, and it seems quite light, but I've never edited big files.

nDray · 2008-03-19 11:21:41

Also, what type of editing will take place? Can it be done with sed, or similar tools?

tizoc · 2008-03-19 15:22:27

In my experience, emacs behaves better than vim when editing large files, but it isn't very good at it anyway. I don't know of any editor for unix that has support for really large files (ultraedit for windows does http://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutori … ling.html).

valnour · 2008-03-19 15:28:36

I'm not sure about emacs in this case, but as an emacs user, I feel that I should chime in. After searching the emacswiki I found this little gem that might help.

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/vlf.el

Read the comments at the top of that file, it's self explanatory. But it was written by someone that wanted to use emacs for opening Very Large Files (VLF).
Good Luck! Oh, and emacs will run on win32 also.

rson451 · 2008-03-19 15:43:23

i've not used it, but there seems to be a similar solution for vim. http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/scri … pt_id=1506

Cotton · 2008-03-19 23:00:59

Many thanks for the suggestions.

code-browser was just the job and thanks to an AUR contribution from Purch is available here.

Loading a 2.5 million line, 300 MB text file takes a few seconds and searching for a string, a few more - its pretty impressive. And cross platform with a GUI. (That's using a system with 2 GB RAM.)

Originally I was looking for something that operated like Wordstar (in the day!) where only the part of the file being viewed was loaded. But for now I'll stick with code-browser.

Last edited by Cotton (2008-03-19 23:06:22)

alex_anthony · 2008-03-20 00:45:44

I once tried loading a 2 GB mpd log in gedit. Wasn't actually that bad...

Arch Linux

#1 2008-03-18 19:34:26

Best editor for massive text files?

#2 2008-03-18 19:36:14

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#3 2008-03-18 19:54:13

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#4 2008-03-18 20:06:16

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#5 2008-03-19 02:47:03

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#6 2008-03-19 10:58:52

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#7 2008-03-19 11:03:57

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#8 2008-03-19 11:13:52

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#9 2008-03-19 11:21:41

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#10 2008-03-19 15:22:27

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#11 2008-03-19 15:28:36

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#12 2008-03-19 15:43:23

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#13 2008-03-19 23:00:59

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

#14 2008-03-20 00:45:44

Re: Best editor for massive text files?

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