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j_bum 2 days ago

VSCode is my go to for large text file interaction on macOS.

TextEdit may be worth looking into as well? Haven’t tested it for large files before.

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dewey 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I have Sublime Text installed for the onlu use case of opening large files. Nothing comes close.

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CharlesW 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Googling around a bit, Sublime Text doesn't seem to be particularly good at this: https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/unable-to-open-a-large-text-...

In my experience, BBEdit will open files that kill other editors: "Handling large files presents no intrinsic problems for BBEdit, though some specific operations may be limited when dealing with files over 2GB in size."

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roto 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I have always found sublime to be the best at large files, well over 1gb. Since you mention bbedit, maybe this is some mac specific issue? I really don't know. But at least among people i know, opening large files has effectively become its main USP.

Should be noted that the linked post is almost 15 years old at this point too, so perhaps not the most up to date either.

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xrisk 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I don’t know if the claim is true, you’ve linked a post from 2012…

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spartanatreyu 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sublime text works better on large files (where file sizes are a few gb) compared to VSCode.

But, you can go faster depending on your usecase:

- If you're trying to manually look through the file, use `less`. You can scroll up and down, go quickly to the top and bottom of the file, and also search the file for strings quickly

- If you already know the string in the file that you're looking for, use ripgrep

- If you're trying to do a search and replace, and you already know what the strings are, use sed. (macos' built-in sed isn't good, so get the proper gnu coreutills through homebrew, and you can access the good sed through `gsed`)

	▲	hmokiguess 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well ripgrep can be just a backend right. Just like your terminal is how you invoke it, you could have your editor do that. In fact, I believe that is what vscode uses. Apparently there’s been a neglected issue about bringing it to Zed. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4560

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fdg4t a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The open source CudaText has the same speed on opening huge files. It has slower rendering, but for huge files it is not the issue.

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typpilol 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Vscode has a special optimizations in place for large files. That's why it works so good.

You can actually disable it in the settings if you want it to try and render the entire thing at once

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hmokiguess 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Speaking of TextEdit, I like what the folks at CodeEdit are doing. They are moving slow and focusing on just the core parts. Maybe I should go give them a try too!