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Is there an open source alternative (similar to ultraedit) to handle files with filesize >200 MBytes?

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possible duplicate of Best Free Text Editor Supporting *More Than* 4GB Files? –  nawfal Feb 26 '13 at 20:19

11 Answers 11

up vote 8 down vote accepted

vim or gvim (graphical vim) should handle that with pleasure.

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Duplicate of Best Free Text Editor Supporting More Than 4G Files? and even Editor to open big text files (XML export files), even if you added "open source" (most are).

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Well, no one else had said it, so:


Always emacs.

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Though it ain't terribly similar to ultraedit. Not compared to Notepad++ anyway. –  Chris Vest Oct 7 '08 at 21:59
Granted. But at least occasionally "I want another program like X" means "I only know X". In which case Dirk might be happier in the long running learning another tool. If this is not the case, please disregard this answer. Cheers. –  dmckee Oct 8 '08 at 15:08

textpad will probably swallow it

oops, just clocked the "open source" requirement. Typing before thinking.

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Even if it's not open source, still love textpad, it would do 200 megs easy. –  Mark Feb 23 '10 at 19:56
if it had java introspection in a separate pane it would be a fast Eclipse replacement (all that tooling takes ages to start up if you just want to hack a file and you are confident in the syntax). I already have it as the editor of choice for most source file types, especially weird web pages which may have 3 or 4 languages simultaneously. Being able to hilight different syntax in the same file using your own schemes is really powerful. It is a brilliant editor. –  Simon Feb 24 '10 at 11:04

Notepad++ is open source and has good support for editing really big files:


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I am unable to open files >250 MByte with notepad++. Are there special settings to make that possible? –  DB. Oct 14 '08 at 8:42
I have problems too with large files –  Aftershock Jan 4 '11 at 19:10

well vim and gvim are great ... i can opn 3GB files without a sweat :)

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JujuEdit is the correct software for this. It won't load the whole file into memory so it's lightning fast when opening even 1 GB+ files. Note: It's not open source (it's freeware) and it is not in active development.

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yes, it does not load into memory the whole file –  Aftershock Jan 5 '11 at 22:28

My specs: Windows XP - 2 GByte RAM

Testfilesize: 280 MBytes

I used a standard installation of the editors below without any further configuration:

Notepad++: Did not open the file (error message: File ist too big to be opened by Notepad++)

Emacs: Did not open the file (error message: Maximum buffer size exceeded)

GVIM or Cream: Did open the file but was unable to perform an internal copy operation with a big chunk of the text.

The lite version of Editpad did the job for me (it is not open source but seems to be free for non commercial use).

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OS specific issue? –  Aif Feb 23 '10 at 19:57
The Emacs and GVIM issues have been resolved by adding more physical RAM. –  DB. Apr 30 '10 at 11:54

EditPad Lite was also very fast to me. Work with big files (ex:114MB) like they were small ones! Very powerful!!

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EditPad Lite says: does not support 2GB files, bummer!

The current version of Notepad++ (open source) just opened it, but only views the beginning of the file. Luckily for me, that was what I needed to see in this case.

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scite is pretty lightweight and handles the 200+ MB file without problem (on my end).

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Why the downvote? Is scite not free, open-source, and capable? The only thing is that it's not ultraedit in terms of feature –  nevets1219 Apr 26 '10 at 20:52

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