Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!public!eeh From: eeh@public.BTR.COM (Eduardo E. Horvath eeh@btr.com) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Files larger than available memory. Message-ID: <483@public.BTR.COM> Date: 27 Sep 90 17:00:55 GMT References: <924@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <1990Sep23.174736.16118@lavaca.uh.edu> <83986@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14646@cbmvax.commodore.com> <14669@cbmvax.commodore.com> Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, MtnView CA, Contact: cs@btr.com 415-966-1429 Lines: 36 In article mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes: >In article <14669@cbmvax.commodore.com> andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel) writes: > And, the logical place to use as a temporary directory is :t > if one doesn't exist, create it. Edit, which can edit files > larger than memory available uses a temp file is :t for this > purpose. >Is that on the device the file is on, or on the device the text editor >was started from? And it's sort of silly if you that device winds up >being ram:. Likewise, you have to deal with being able to write on >that file. Since mg isn't part of a commercial product, I'm tempted to >make this feature something you have to enable at compile time, and if >it's on, allow the user to give a file name for the disk buffer file. The logical place to put the temporary file is in t: (maybe that's what Andy meant) so you can assign the temporary directory wherever you want: RAM: for speed, or a HD partition for size. If you are planning to keep several pages of the file in RAM, how do you decide the amount of memory to use? What if the user wants to run a memory hogging program (i.e. C++ compiler) while still editing a file? Two suggestions: 1) Allow the user to (optionally) specify the number of buffers to use when launching mg. 2) Provide a "flush out all buffers to disk" command in mg to free up memory just before launching a memory hog application. ========================================================================= Eduardo Horvath eeh@btr.com ..!{decwrl,mips,fernwood}!btr!eeh "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." - Sledge Hammer =========================================================================