Re: Emacs has hard time with big text files
Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
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?
I can't know what is using up memory, because I don't
know what other apps he has loaded. EMACS is certainly
not the only thing running. Web browsers notoriously
eat lots of memory, and if they are running some
JAVA, FLASH, some animation, or whatever, would likely be kept in
memory due to constant accesses. EMACS, responding to
keystrokes only, may then get pushed out. Memory
may almost all be eaten before EMACS gets loaded, in
which case loading another 46MB file might push the
system into swap, even if not all of it is kept in
RAM. I also don't know how much RAM he has.
If the file is so large, the editor should not keep it all in memory.
See e.g. less, qemacs and IIRC also nvi.
I didn't state that swap is the problem. I didn't
say that lots of memory is being used. I only suggest
that if it is, then it could be a cause of the
symptoms. Even if swap is being used, it may not
be the cause of his symptoms.
I'm trying to isolate the cause of the problem, not state
the solution.
Mike
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