File Edit Limit WS7.0 Rev A

[ironbutt]

Does anyone know what the size limit of a file is you can edit (NON-document mode) in WordStar 7.0 Revision A?? I routinely edit a 4 meg file with 46,000 lines that is growing about 20% per year in lines and size.? Just for kicks, tonight I tried opening a 40 meg file and WordStar choked on it (but so did four other editors I have).

While I don't need to worry about 40 meg anytime soon, my immediate future calls for pushing my 45,000 line file to 100,000 lines and 8 meg in the next few years.

Anyone know if that is possible?? The data in the file is fairly important so obviously I don't want to go past a know limit.

Thanks!

Mike

[Forum Admin]

I don't know for sure, but one report from a few years ago talked about 5Mb being OK, but that over that you may get parts of the saved file missing. Whether this depended on the amount of memory wasn't known.

The way to get a better idea for your installation would perhaps be to create a copy of your current file and then copy and save, to another file, a portion of it. Adjust this to be about 0.5Mb. Then copy this into the copy of the main file and save. Check it, and repeat - increasing the file size by about 0.5Mb each time until it fails.

Regards
Mike

[ironbutt]

I don't know for sure, but one report from a few years ago talked about 5Mb being OK, but that over that you may get parts of the saved file missing. Whether this depended on the amount of memory wasn't known.

The way to get a better idea for your installation would perhaps be to create a copy of your current file and then copy and save, to another file, a portion of it. Adjust this to be about 0.5Mb. Then copy this into the copy of the main file and save. Check it, and repeat - increasing the file size by about 0.5Mb each time until it fails.

Regards
Mike

Mike,

Thanks!  I have the file (by copying it 3 times over) up to 7,252,352 bytes (original that I use daily is 2,417,536) and made some changes in the middle and the end and the save part seems to work good but... find works, so far the only problem I can see is that the line counter gets messed up.  It goes to 65,535 (two byte internal counter I assume) and then trips back to zero.  That is also what concerns we, what else might be limited by a two byte limit or other limitation

Mike

[Forum Admin]

I suspect that word count, or any other counter type functions would have problems. I also suspected maximum DOS addressable memory size as a limit.

What happens if you change something just after where the line counter has wrapped back to zero? Does it only change there, or does it change on the same line number at the start of the file as well?

Regards
Mike

[ironbutt]

I suspect that word count, or any other counter type functions would have problems. I also suspected maximum DOS addressable memory size as a limit.

What happens if you change something just after where the line counter has wrapped back to zero? Does it only change there, or does it change on the same line number at the start of the file as well?

Regards
Mike

That is a great idea... the editing actually seems to be OK, I made an entry on line 65535 and then on line 0 (really 65536) went ^QR (begining) and then did a find.  It found both BUT the display was messed up.  Saved the file, got out of WS went back in and did another find, all was good.  Did ^QR and find again and the display was messed up...

So 65,535 lines in non-document mode looks to be a milestone where if the file is less then x meg (6 meg on mine), irritating problems start happening.

So what are people using to edit truly big files?!

Mike

[Forum Admin]

I sometimes use AEdit (sometimes called ALTER) which was originally written for programming on Intel development systems - someone says it'll go at least as far as 28Mb. No WordStar command support though. If you're interested in trying it, have a look at the following Web sites:

• http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.antonis.de/aedit/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Daedit%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLC,GGLC:1970-01,GGLC:en
• http://sepp.zutphen.nu/aedit/
• http://www.braun-home.net/michael

If you're happy to work in Windows, there's TextPad - which I use frequently. This has a WordStar keyboard command option (I use the default commands). File size limit is that of the virtual memory you have access to: http://www.textpad.com/

If you do a Google search on "large file editor" you'll find a few other options. A couple of editors that I thought might do the trick - Zeus programmer's file editor being one, also seen to be limited to approximately 65K lines.

Please keep me up-to-date on what you try and find works best.

Good Luck
Regards
Mike

[PGAGA]

Saturday 14 January 2006

Two things.

[1] WSDos is limited in file size and display, but the size of editing buffers.  They can be adjusted using WSChange.

[2] One option is WSedit, part of WriteandSet.  It is build environment was programing.

Phil

[ironbutt]

Thank you for the tips!  It will be a little bit before I can try them out, but I will as soon as time allows.

I did go through the memory settings, but could not find any that changed things.  It looks like I will plan on switching toward the end of the year (I am probably 18 months out before I get to the 65535 lines) but I'll start testing new editors in the coming months.

Mike

[PGAGA]

Thursday, January 19, 2006

> an entry on line 65535

My reference material is in storage until summer, but my memory finally tweaked about an early WS7 review.  If I remember correctly this number was also the limit for the number of pages which could be printed.  The reviewer actually did some overnight test print.

This answer does not quite feel right, but there was some sort of numerical threshold after which WS7 failed.

Phil