vi: Tmp file too large - ULIMIT?

[Steve Dyer]

In article <1235 at rsiatl.UUCP> jgd at rsiatl.UUCP (John G. De Armond) writes:
>You obviously hit a ulimit :-)
>I've never hit a file too big to edit, assuming the line lengths are
>reasonable.  I could see no real reason for there to be a practical
>limit because even if they are using an int as a line counter, a 32
>bit int is pretty big.

"Tmp file too large" has nothing to do with ulimit.  It has to do with
versions of "vi" which have fixed array sizes, a frequent bug in programs
which originated on the PDP-11 and whoise sizes have only been adjusted
in later releases rather than being redesigned for a virtual memory
environment.  If you haven't seen this with 386/ix, they've either chosen
large enough manifest constants for you not to notice or they attacked
the problem earlier.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer at ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer at arktouros.mit.edu, dyer at hstbme.mit.edu