vi large files

Once upon a time a colleague asked me if there is a better editor than vi installed on my db server. Well, I was not really about arguing the benefit of ed (less memory usage, no useless error message). But one advantage of ed was (I believed) the ability to read large files


$ vi alert_DB01.log
Out of memory saving lines for undo - try using ed
:ed
"alert_DB01.log" 612637 lines, 20458891 characters
:612636
Thu Aug 25 16:08:20 2011
LNS: Standby redo logfile selected for thread 1 sequence 6898 for destination LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2
:q

of course most of readers are using some clicky fancy tools with colors and/or unlimited undo.

Well, for those who use vi on AIX, check this

$ vi -y 9999999 alert_DB01.log
Tue Oct 26 13:59:12 2010
Starting ORACLE instance (normal)
sskgpgetexecname failed to get name
LICENSE_MAX_SESSION = 0
LICENSE_SESSIONS_WARNING = 0
Picked latch-free SCN scheme 3
Autotune of undo retention is turned on.
IMODE=BR
ILAT =27
LICENSE_MAX_USERS = 0
"alert_DB01.log" 612662 lines, 20459538 characters

Oh yes !!!

6 thoughts on “vi large files”

  1. Alexis Gil Gonzales

    Once in a while, the need to read a large log file arises.
    However, I don’t see the convenience of using an editor for this purpose. I rather use a reader: less or zless for compressed files, as long as I don’t need to modify the file.

    Alexis

  5. Laurent Schneider Post author

    on the other hand, you probably have trucks of memories and you could increase vi default by setting linelimit in your environment

    export EXINIT=”set ll=200000000″

    so you could edit up to 20M lines. It is only a limit, there is no additional memory usage while editing small files

Comments are closed.