3 ms·

Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/ https://www.sublimetext.com/) is fantastic. Startup time is instant. RAM usage is low. It'll do syntax highlighting o

Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/ https://www.sublimetext.com/) is fantastic. Startup time is instant. RAM usage is low. It'll do syntax highlighting out of the box. And with a few extensions (optional) it'll do almost everything that VS Code does (sublime-lsp is key for IDE-like functionality). It's also great for large files so long as they'll fit in RAM. Bonus: it works cross platform (windows/mac/linux).

beAbU 4y ago
+1 for Sublime. I have yet to find it's max file size limit. It can seemingly open up literally anything with no perf impact.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I tried to open a 90GB file once (on a system with 16GB RAM), which it didn't like very much. It didn't actually crash, I just gave up on it before it completed loading the file (I suspect it may actually have worked eventually, utilising swap - but I imagine it would have been unusably slow). I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand. That said, if your file is more reasonably sized (I've opened 7GB files no problem) then the performance and feature set you get is impressive. You can get instant scrolling to anywhere in the file, full syntax highlighting, find and replace, multiple cursors, etc all with reasonable performance. I find it does lag a little when making edits - especially with multiple cursors - but it's still quite usable.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand. That's what mmap does: maps the entire file into the address space of the process while letting the kernel load the pages as they are touched. I assume that would improve performance significantly but I'm not sure if anyone's tried it.
    - yakubin 4y ago
      That would be read-only though, so not an ideal solution for Sublime. Although one could mmap and then reference the original from a structure describing how the file was modified. However mmaping files which can be modified by another process concurrently is tricky. You can just get killed by SIGBUS.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    >> I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand It seems that vim could work this way as you are always dealing with a small section of text at a time. However, this seems not to be how it works.
bheadmaster 4y ago
Note: Sublime Text is proprietary software.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Indeed it is (and it's good that you mentioned this). I should note that the pricing and license terms are very reasonable: - $99 (USD) for a perpetual licence for the current version at the time of purchase + 3 years worth of updates. - Per-user rather than per-machine, so you can install it on multiple machines with a single licence.
- Karawebnetwork 4y ago
  Adding to this, while the software is proprietary the community mods/plugins/packages ecosystem is very healthy and easy to use. https://packagecontrol.io/ https://packagecontrol.io/
  - wkdneidbwf 4y ago
    i wouldn’t call it healthy. the packages ecosystem is slowly dying and absolutely full of outdated, abandoned projects.
    - Karawebnetwork 4y ago
      It's not at its peak for sure, perhaps aging, but still healthy enough to take a jog around the block. SublimeLinter was modified 2 weeks ago, Side Bar Enhancements 1 month ago, Bracket Highlighter 2 weeks ago, etc. Sorting by last modified on https://packagecontrol.io/browse/updated https://packagecontrol.io/browse/updated, you need to go to page 20 to find the ones updated more than one year ago.
travisporter 4y ago
Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use. For USD 99 you get three years of support for an individual license.
- tartuffe78 4y ago
  It's free though
  - unknownaccount 4y ago
    When you try saving a file randomly you get pop ups telling you that you need a license. Eventually it gets so irritating you give up on sublime text entirely.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway5371 4y ago
      or, you know, pay for the great software you use?
    - f1refly 4y ago
      I just got a license because it improved my life tremendously, but I can see that 70$ is a hefty price for individuals.
Yizahi 4y ago
+1 for Sublime Text. Additional lesser known capability - it is possibly the best editor for gigantic text files. I have used it to open and edit files with 5.5 million lines, and it was reasonably fast. Afaik not many editors can even open very big files.
- Poppys 4y ago
  This is my use case for Sublime Text, if I get stuck with a massive file I go straight to Sublime.
  - bezoz 4y ago
    but why is it your backup option? Any reason you don't use it as a first option?
    - devoutsalsa 4y ago
      Sublime Text has a small, maybe old, number of plug-ins.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
This is my goto as well. There are other Windows-exclusive options but it being cross platform makes it a no-brainer for those bouncing between OSes, since things like configs and plugins can be easily shared between machines. It also eschews Windows’ notoriously dodgy text rendering in favor of its own which means that it doesn’t share text rendering quirks with e.g. Visual Studio (the full fat IDE, not the electron thing). When doing C# work I wish I could transplant Sublime’s editor view into Visual Studio because it’s just so much better.
whalesalad 4y ago
Gotta throw my vote in for this, too. I have been a paying user since the first version, after leaving Textmate. I daily drive VS Code now for the remote experience, but Sublime blows it away in performance. Even on the nicest hardware imaginable there is noticeable input latency on virtually all tasks in vscode.
roydivision 4y ago
+1. Great, solid editor, and the extension ecosystem is great, plugins for pretty much anything you'd need.
hilbert42 4y ago
Just tried to load an .EXE and it only seemed to list as binary when loaded, that's OK but is there a 'load as text' option? Forcing text mode is sometimes useful when recovering damage files (loading a PDF seems to work as text). Sorry if I've overlooked something major.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  File > Reopen with Encoding > UTF-8 (or pick your encoding of choice)
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    OK thanks, thought it'd be in the View menu or such. Seems a little odd that it's so obscure.
    - f1refly 4y ago
      You'd usually look up stuff like that with a shot in the dark into the fuzzy-searching command bar, I believe it's available with ctrl+shift+p? It's been a while since I've used sublime.
      - hilbert42 4y ago
        Thanks, will try it.
the__alchemist 4y ago
Just tried it - as advertised! Much more responsive than VsCode. Replacing it for editing one-off files. Now, we need a project-editing IDE like JetBrains with better responsiveness. Showing an OOM lower RAM and CPU use in the Task Manager.

beAbU 4y ago

+1 for Sublime. I have yet to find it's max file size limit. It can seemingly open up literally anything with no perf impact.

nicoburns 4y ago
I tried to open a 90GB file once (on a system with 16GB RAM), which it didn't like very much. It didn't actually crash, I just gave up on it before it completed loading the file (I suspect it may actually have worked eventually, utilising swap - but I imagine it would have been unusably slow). I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand. That said, if your file is more reasonably sized (I've opened 7GB files no problem) then the performance and feature set you get is impressive. You can get instant scrolling to anywhere in the file, full syntax highlighting, find and replace, multiple cursors, etc all with reasonable performance. I find it does lag a little when making edits - especially with multiple cursors - but it's still quite usable.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand. That's what mmap does: maps the entire file into the address space of the process while letting the kernel load the pages as they are touched. I assume that would improve performance significantly but I'm not sure if anyone's tried it.
  - yakubin 4y ago
    That would be read-only though, so not an ideal solution for Sublime. Although one could mmap and then reference the original from a structure describing how the file was modified. However mmaping files which can be modified by another process concurrently is tricky. You can just get killed by SIGBUS.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> I think for such large files you really need an editor that doesn't buffer the entire file into RAM and loads chunks in from disk on demand It seems that vim could work this way as you are always dealing with a small section of text at a time. However, this seems not to be how it works.

bheadmaster 4y ago

Note: Sublime Text is proprietary software.

nicoburns 4y ago
Indeed it is (and it's good that you mentioned this). I should note that the pricing and license terms are very reasonable: - $99 (USD) for a perpetual licence for the current version at the time of purchase + 3 years worth of updates. - Per-user rather than per-machine, so you can install it on multiple machines with a single licence.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
Adding to this, while the software is proprietary the community mods/plugins/packages ecosystem is very healthy and easy to use. https://packagecontrol.io/ https://packagecontrol.io/
- wkdneidbwf 4y ago
  i wouldn’t call it healthy. the packages ecosystem is slowly dying and absolutely full of outdated, abandoned projects.
  - Karawebnetwork 4y ago
    It's not at its peak for sure, perhaps aging, but still healthy enough to take a jog around the block. SublimeLinter was modified 2 weeks ago, Side Bar Enhancements 1 month ago, Bracket Highlighter 2 weeks ago, etc. Sorting by last modified on https://packagecontrol.io/browse/updated https://packagecontrol.io/browse/updated, you need to go to page 20 to find the ones updated more than one year ago.

travisporter 4y ago

Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use. For USD 99 you get three years of support for an individual license.

tartuffe78 4y ago
It's free though
- unknownaccount 4y ago
  When you try saving a file randomly you get pop ups telling you that you need a license. Eventually it gets so irritating you give up on sublime text entirely.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway5371 4y ago
    or, you know, pay for the great software you use?
  - f1refly 4y ago
    I just got a license because it improved my life tremendously, but I can see that 70$ is a hefty price for individuals.

Yizahi 4y ago

+1 for Sublime Text. Additional lesser known capability - it is possibly the best editor for gigantic text files. I have used it to open and edit files with 5.5 million lines, and it was reasonably fast. Afaik not many editors can even open very big files.

Poppys 4y ago
This is my use case for Sublime Text, if I get stuck with a massive file I go straight to Sublime.
- bezoz 4y ago
  but why is it your backup option? Any reason you don't use it as a first option?
  - devoutsalsa 4y ago
    Sublime Text has a small, maybe old, number of plug-ins.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

This is my goto as well. There are other Windows-exclusive options but it being cross platform makes it a no-brainer for those bouncing between OSes, since things like configs and plugins can be easily shared between machines. It also eschews Windows’ notoriously dodgy text rendering in favor of its own which means that it doesn’t share text rendering quirks with e.g. Visual Studio (the full fat IDE, not the electron thing). When doing C# work I wish I could transplant Sublime’s editor view into Visual Studio because it’s just so much better.

whalesalad 4y ago

Gotta throw my vote in for this, too. I have been a paying user since the first version, after leaving Textmate. I daily drive VS Code now for the remote experience, but Sublime blows it away in performance. Even on the nicest hardware imaginable there is noticeable input latency on virtually all tasks in vscode.

roydivision 4y ago

+1. Great, solid editor, and the extension ecosystem is great, plugins for pretty much anything you'd need.

hilbert42 4y ago

Just tried to load an .EXE and it only seemed to list as binary when loaded, that's OK but is there a 'load as text' option? Forcing text mode is sometimes useful when recovering damage files (loading a PDF seems to work as text). Sorry if I've overlooked something major.

nicoburns 4y ago
File > Reopen with Encoding > UTF-8 (or pick your encoding of choice)
- hilbert42 4y ago
  OK thanks, thought it'd be in the View menu or such. Seems a little odd that it's so obscure.
  - f1refly 4y ago
    You'd usually look up stuff like that with a shot in the dark into the fuzzy-searching command bar, I believe it's available with ctrl+shift+p? It's been a while since I've used sublime.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      Thanks, will try it.

the__alchemist 4y ago

Just tried it - as advertised! Much more responsive than VsCode. Replacing it for editing one-off files. Now, we need a project-editing IDE like JetBrains with better responsiveness. Showing an OOM lower RAM and CPU use in the Task Manager.