Re: Emacs has hard time with big text files

[Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir@cohens.org.il>]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 11:14:04AM -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:

> If he's filled up memory, and the system has swapped the code
> EMACS uses to move the cursor to disc, then he may be seeing
> lag due to swap time to move the code in and execute it.
>
> That might or might not slow down other applications, depending
> on what cache algorithms are in effect. Keypresses don't come
> very often.

But why is so much memory used in the first place?

If the file is so large, the editor should not keep it all in memory.
See e.g. less, qemacs and IIRC also nvi.

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