MacTips Discussions

MacTips Discussions

Very Large Text Documents

1. opfallon Member 4 months ago

   What is the best way to edit very large text documents (20Mb)?
   TextEdit and Word keep crashing when I try 'replace all'.
   I am using an iMac 2.8 2Gb.
   Do I need to use another format for the doc (RTF/plaintext)?
   Upgrade Memory?
   Use another app?

   
   

2. MichaelZhao Finder of Lost Children 4 months ago

   try breaking it up into smaller portions using copy paste, then copy paste it all back into one file.

   
   

3. travisjeffery Renaissance Man 4 months ago

   What exactly is the file? .txt?

   
   

4. opfallon Member 4 months ago

   I've saved it as a .txt file and as a Word file.
   I don't want to break it up into ten parts or so because that would mean that I had to do the find/replace operations ten times over- it's onerous enough as it is.

   
   

5. travisjeffery Renaissance Man 4 months ago

   I would definitely use another app, TextMate is known for being pretty crappy with larger files, however Vim or Emacs will be able to handle it fairly easily.

   Install MacVim from here: http://code.google.com/p/macvim/
   And then install this script: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1506
   (gunzip it, open up MacVim and type in ":e SCRIPT'S_LOCATION", when you have it open type in ":so %")
   Restart MacVim and when you have it open type in ":let g:LargeFile=20", and then open up your file with it, and it should work.

   
   

6. opfallon Member 4 months ago

   Thanks, I will try one of these.
   Which is best for the non-expert user?

   
   

7. travisjeffery Renaissance Man 4 months ago

   If you have the initiative doing the steps above with MacVim should work, if you don't another easy way would be with TextWrangler: http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/download.shtml

   
   

8. opfallon Member 4 months ago

   TextWrangler worked a treat, very easy to use, very quick.
   Didn't really want to get involved in scripts etc. at this stage for MacVim.
   Thank you for intelligent and to-the-point answers.

   
   

9. Brandon Hopkins Moderator 4 months ago

   I absolutely love Smultron. You can download it here.

   
   

10. a.hwang Member 4 months ago

    I also like Smultron. I use it for everything from html to python.

    
    

Reply

You must log in to post.