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Dealing with HUGE text files?

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f0dder:
I've seen a few inquiries here and there for people who need to deal with huge text files - we're talking the multi-gigabyte range here. Usually it's for log files and the people really just need viewing (and grepping) and not editing, but edit facilities might be necessary every now and then.

Does any of you guys know a text viewer (or, better, editor) that handles such files without hiccup? We're obviously talking something that doesn't use 32bit variables for file size or line count, and doesn't try to load the entire file at once... I'm pretty sure I bumped into such an editor years ago, but haven't had the need for huge files since.

Freeware would of course be preferred, but any suggestions are welcome. Some people seem to think that you'd need a 64bit editor to handle such big files, but imho it's perfectly possibly to handle with a (smartly programmed) 32bit editor... if you need to handle really big files, it's folly to try and do full-memory loading anyway :)

housetier:
I have had adequate results with vim and http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1506

Naturally I recommend vim because I don't use anything else.

f0dder:
Doesn't VIM load the entire file into memory?

EDIT: I know UltraEdit can handle files > 4gig, and doesn't try to load the entire file... but I'd like to see other alternatives :)

jgpaiva:
From what I know, vim does work with large files.
It does take a while to load the file, however.

I've just found this plugin which will probably solve that problem :)

f0dder:
From what I know, vim does work with large files.
It does take a while to load the file, however.

I've just found this plugin which will probably solve that problem :)
-jgpaiva (August 27, 2009, 03:48 AM)
--- End quote ---
housetier already posted that script :) - taking a while to load kinda indicates to me that it does full loading? I can't see why disabling an undo system would make initial file opening faster, for instance.

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