VERY large text files and Snow Leopard

Sometimes I need to work on EXTREMELY large text files. 200-300 megs or more.

My favorite text editor on my MacBook Pro is TextMate. However, TM chokes on very large text files. Even ones around the 100MB mark.

Is there a text editor that can handle such files for Snow Leopard?

Thanks!

cbmeeks

Posted 2010-05-06T20:41:43.700

Reputation: 233

Possible duplicate of : http://superuser.com/questions/4044/what-editor-viewer-to-use-to-inspect-large-text-based-files

– rlb.usa – 2010-05-06T20:47:36.027

Possible duplicate of : http://superuser.com/questions/34749/text-editor-for-very-big-file-windows

– rlb.usa – 2010-05-06T20:48:45.057

Also see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/952886/editing-large-files-on-mac-os-x

– ChristopheD – 2010-05-06T20:59:52.180

Possible duplicate of: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/159521/text-editor-to-open-big-giant-huge-large-text-files

– dag729 – 2010-05-06T21:57:08.523

ChristopheD's suggestion is the only one of these which is OS X specific. – Doug Harris – 2010-05-24T15:51:24.953

Answers

Vim.

The one true editor.

And this: Open big files and work fast (from vim.wikia.com)

wawawawa

Posted 2010-05-06T20:41:43.700

Reputation: 249

If I ever have to handle big text files I always switch over to TextWrangler. Same under the hood engine as BBEdit, but free. As in beer.

The one thing I would improve about TextMate would be to give it a command / insert mode like VIM (odd because the thing is inspired by emacs) and give it better large file handling ability.

Josh K

Posted 2010-05-06T20:41:43.700

Reputation: 11 754

TextWrangler can support up to 384MB files. – Lyndsey Ferguson – 2010-06-07T21:45:59.027

I've used Smultron with very large text files and it has worked well.

Robert S Ciaccio

Posted 2010-05-06T20:41:43.700

Reputation: 1 470

-1

BBEdit will work on really big files and intelligently swap in / out the portion you are working on.

EMACS also has paging.

Have you considered adding RAM?

drewk

Posted 2010-05-06T20:41:43.700

Reputation: 984

Adding a bit of RAM isn't going to help. – Josh K – 2010-05-06T21:28:42.713