size limit for text files ?

[Patrick Proniewski]

Hello,

What is the maximum size for a file that BBEdit can open ?
I've tried to open a 700 MB text file without success:
(MacOS Error code: -116)

patpro

[Patrick Woolsey]

Patrick Proniewski <pat...@patpro.net> sez:

Please see:

<http://faq.barebones.com/do_getanswer.php?record_id=36>

Regards,

Patrick Woolsey
==
Bare Bones Software, Inc. <http://www.barebones.com>
P.O. Box 1048, Bedford, MA 01730-1048

[Doug McNutt]

At 10:14 -0400 8/7/09, Patrick Woolsey wrote:
<http://faq.barebones.com/do_getanswer.php?record_id=36>

BBEdit and TextWrangler represent open documents as Unicode, which uses two bytes for each character. Combined with an internal Mac OS X limitation, this means that you can open files up to 384 megabytes in size (402,653,184 characters).

I was into that some time ago and decided I was being too pedantic but. . .

The character count appears to be 384 * 1204^2 which would be mebibytes. It's a shame to have to ask but the Computer Science folks made a serious mistake when they usurped the metric abbreviations likely well known to users of text editors. Many users would wonder if the author made a mistake in multiplication.

And what if the source file is encoded as U-16 or U-08? Can BBEdit open an 805 megabyte file with a 16 bit BOM? Is it limited to files even smaller than 402 megabytes if it is UTF-08 with a large number of three byte characters? Does BBEdit read the entire file into memory and then convert it to U-16? If so is it an in-place conversion?

The thought of encountering a U-32 file is scary. What happens if a file is split in the middle of a two-byte character?

In short is the limit 402,653,184 bytes of file size or 402,653,184 characters as preprocessed by BBEdit?

I know. The answer is "all that is proprietary". sigh.

--
--> Marriage and kilo are troubled words. Turmoil results when centuries-old usage is altered in specialized jargon <--.

[Patrick Woolsey]

>At 10:14 -0400 8/7/09, Patrick Woolsey wrote:
><http://faq.barebones.com/do_getanswer.php?record_id=36>
>
>BBEdit and TextWrangler represent open documents as Unicode, which uses
>two bytes for each character. Combined with an internal Mac OS X
>limitation, this means that you can open files up to 384 megabytes in size
>(402,653,184 characters).
>

We're using the term in its customary manner. :-)

[...]
>In short is the limit 402,653,184 bytes of file size [...]

Yes, as described. :)

[David Kelly]

On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 09:44:45AM -0600, Doug McNutt wrote:
>
> In short is the limit 402,653,184 bytes of file size or 402,653,184
> characters as preprocessed by BBEdit?
>
> I know. The answer is "all that is proprietary". sigh.

Create files of the types you describe and try opening them yourself in
BBEdit to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

If pressed to open a very large text file then vim(1) from Terminal.app
will open anything you have disk space for. Be forewarned that it makes
a copy of the file so you need at least as much free space in your home
directory as the original.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, dke...@HiWAAY.net
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.

[Patrick Proniewski]

On 07 août 2009, at 16:14, Patrick Woolsey wrote:

> Please see:
>
> <http://faq.barebones.com/do_getanswer.php?record_id=36>

ho. ok.
I remember about 10 years ago, being able to open a +170 MB file on my
powermac 7100, 42 MB RAM, using BBEdit. So I was so shocked not beeing
able to open a 700MB file on my MacBook Pro 4GB RAM, I didn't even
thought about the FAQ.

thanks,
patpro

[fongd]

Opening up a (really) old thread here, but is there a technical reason (other than available RAM) that BBEdit can't open files more than 900 MB in size? (Using http://faq.barebones.com/support/bbedit/faqs.html#bigfiles as a reference.)

My MacBook Pro has 16 GB of RAM which I imagine should be plenty to open a file that's 1.7 GB in size even if you double that for Unicode support.

-f-