govern@houxf.UUCP (08/16/83)
<Sorry to post this to the net, but I couldn't get ARPANET to deliver it for me. Somebody had a file that was too big too read using ed.> To: harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!CMCNATT@stl-host1 References: <3944@sri-arpa.UUCP> You didn't say which version of UNIX you have, but there are several programs available that may be useful. bfs = big file scanner is a slightly dumber version of ed that uses a small buffer to hold part of the file, but leaves most of it out on disk. It's fairly good for minor work of the type you probably need to do. split [-n] file [ name ] splits a file into n-line pieces (default n=1000), named <name>aa, <name>ab, ..., (default name="x"). File can be standard input or -. vi If you are using Berkeley UNIX 4.1 or better, and have enough space in /tmp, you should be able to vi immense files; you may have to go into csh and raise some limits to do it, but this isn't hard if your system is configured for large swap space. Even on USG, vi can handle much bigger files than ed can. csplit is a fancy program to split up files based on context. head and tail can be used to split the file in two, if that will do the job. head is a Berkeley program, but trivial to write; it cats the first n lines of the file and exits. Bill Stewart ucbvax!ihnp4!houxf!govern decvax!harpo!houxf!govern