3 ms·

Now I'm curious how Vim deals with large files. I'm assuming the went the pread route.

• rocqua 8y ago
  Vim needs to do a lot more special stuff, because it has to handle random insertions and deletions. Doing those things to a file (mmaped or otherwise) requires moving all data after the edit. If I recall correctly, vim/vi uses a linked list of 'chunks' that is dynamically merged. For long files I would expect some form of lazy loading of chunks.
  • dullgiulio 8y ago
    That's right. The key data structure is the rope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure)
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • snarfy 8y ago
      Nice! I thought xi was the only editor that used ropes.