Sys 5.3 vi file-size limit?

[Tim Wright]

In <447 at minya.UUCP> jc at minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:

>Does anyone know if it's possible to do something about vi's absurdly
>small file-size limit?  This is an ESIX system, but I've stumbled
>across the same problem on an assortment of other systems, so maybe
>there's information to be learned about them, too.  On the other hand,
>this problem does seem to be specific to Sys/V; I've often edited
>multi-Mbyte files on Suns and DECstations.

>For instance, this machine has 16 Mbytes of memory, and has around
>12 Mbyte free in the root partition, which should be sufficient to
>edit some rather large files.  But vi absolutely refuses to deal
>with files over about 1/2 Mbytes; it says they're too big.  This
>isn't a ulimit problem; I've verified that vi (like all the rest
>of my applications) has the largest ulimit that I've convinced
>the system to accept, much large than half a Mbyte.

>At the moment, I've sort of kludged my way around it by writing a 
>little program that breaks a big file up into little pieces, but of 
>course, doing it that way is a pain in several parts of the anatomy.

>I have this suspicion that the size is hard-coded into vi, but I'd
>be happy to learn how abysmally ignorant I am.  "RTFM" would be quite
>welcome, if someone can point out where in TFM this is described.

You are correct in that the limit is effectively hard-coded. Vi has a define
VMUNIX to say whether you're on a Vax or a pdp11, whoops, sorry this is
1991 :-)
On the 3b2 and others (as you correctly point out), VMUNIX was not defined
when vi was built hence the ridiculous limit. I'm surprised that ESIX has
this error.
The answer ?
1) Run vip-mode in GNU-emacs
2) better - run GNU emacs native and edit any file (including binaries)
3) get stevie (vi clone)
4) moan and get vi fixed for ESIX.

Tim
--
Tim Wright, Dell Computer Corp. (UK) | Email address
Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1RW       | Domain: tim at dell.co.uk
Tel: +44-344-860456                  | Uucp: ...!ukc!delluk!tim
"What's the problem? You've got an IQ of six thousand, haven't you?"