Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpsemc!bd
From: bd@hpsemc.HP.COM (bob desinger)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Editing large files
Message-ID: <1270003@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Date: 9 Mar 88 02:54:03 GMT
References: <1232@wjvax.UUCP>
Organization: HP SEMC, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 22

Mario Dona (mario@wjvax.UUCP) writes:
> Does anyone know of a way of editing extremely large text files?

If you have System V or Xenix, look into bfs (`big file scanner').
It was written by Marc Rochkind around the time he wrote SCCS for
System III, but doesn't exist on BSD systems.

> Alternately, does anyone know of a program that can take a 
> large file and chop it up into manageable peices; ...
 
The `split' program is universal, but it's not geared to splitting
things on context-sensitive boundaries.  If you just want to break the
file up into N-line chunks without regard for context (because you'll
just recombine them later anyway), I recommend split.  Otherwise, look
into the `csplit' program (context split) on System III, System V,
and Xenix, but again not on BSD.  Csplit can split text at lines
containing certain patterns.  If you're running BSD, you're probably
stuck with `sed' unless you can find some public-domain tools for
this.

Hope this helps.
-- bd