Linux text editor for working with huge files

Question

Hello,

I have a huge (~2GB) file that I need to navigate around. I don't actually need to edit it, just jump around efficiently.

I tried vim but it choked.

Any recommendations for working with huge files on Linux?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here is a similar question.

Answer 2

emacs works very well with files into the 100's of megabytes, I've used it on log files without too much trouble.

But generally when I have some kind of analysis task, I find writing a perl script a better choice.

Answer 3

Since you don't need to actually edit the file:

1. view (or vim -R) should work reasonably well on large files.
2. Or you can use more or less

Answer 4

Vim has a LargeFile plugin for larges files. It will basically configure vim to not use a swap file and undo levels when opening big files (like in Vim Tip 611).

But I think I'd rather use grep and split to navigate in such a file (see Grep with large patterns files).

Answer 5

This has been a recurring question for many years. (The numbers keep changing, but the concept is the same: how do I view or edit files that are larger than memory?)

Obviously more or less are good approaches to merely reading the files --- less even offers vi like keybindings for scrolling and searching.

A Freshmeat search on "large files" suggests that two editors would be particularly suited to your needs.

One would be: lfhex ... a large file hex editor (which depends on Qt). That one, obviously, entails using a GUI.

Another would seem to be suited to console use: hed ... and it claims to have a vim-like interface (including an ex mode?).

I'm sure I've seen other editors for Linux/UNIX that were able to page through files without loading their entirety into memory. However, I don't recall any of their names. I'm making this response a "wiki" entry to encourage others to add their links to such editors. (Yes, I am familiar with ways to work around the issue using split and cat; but I'm thinking of editors, especially console/curses editors which can dispense with that and save us the time/latencies and disk space overhead that such approaches entail).

Answer 6

I tried to edit a huge file of 7GB with PilotEdit. But it may take you 15 minutes to open/save a 2GB file. After you open the file, you can view/edit it quickly. You may try to open FTP files with PilotEdit.