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What editor/viewer to use to inspect large text based files?
Text editor for very big file - Windows

When I want to view a large log file or other text file, opening it in Windows' notepad takes forever, yet I find myself doing it all the time.

Is there a better (faster at opening, scrolling) application for viewing large text files on Windows?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Sep 17 '09 at 10:29

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closed as exact duplicate by Diago Sep 17 '09 at 12:57

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15 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

One of the Windows ports of less (command line text file viewer".

And avoid any need to load the whole file, or have any chance of changing it. And has strong (regex) search facilities.

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up vote 6 down vote

Notepad++ is better and faster

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NotePad++ is locks up and is unstable for large (+50MB) files for me. – Ash Sep 17 '09 at 10:03
-1 Much as I like Scintilla ( the editor component Notepad++ wraps ), it doesn't handle large files well at all. Usually on Windows I end up having TextPad too just for large files. – Pete Kirkham Sep 17 '09 at 10:06
+1 for Notepad++. It's fast and useful. I didn't know about limitations with very large files and it hasn't hindered me yet. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun Sep 17 '09 at 11:49
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up vote 3 down vote

Try TextPad, it's free also.

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TextPad is shareware, it does cost (but is an excellent editor). – Richard Sep 17 '09 at 10:02
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up vote 3 down vote

Total Commander's got a built-in text viewer (Lister/F3) which is much faster to open large files than notepad.

Lister can be enhanced with a variety of useful extensions

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there is a freeware standalone version of Lister available here: ghisler.com/lister – T. Kaltnekar Sep 17 '09 at 12:23
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up vote 1 down vote

Notepad++ is always a good choice for a text editor.

If the text file is extremely large, then from experience I find that a web browser is pretty good. Just drag and drop the text/log file into the browser window and it should open automatically.

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up vote 1 down vote

The vim should be faster.

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up vote 0 down vote

If you're talking very large files you probably want whats know as a "disk based editor" or a text editor that supports this. This type of editor does not load the entire file into RAM. Instead it only loads the part you're currently looking at.

A drawback of this is that often you don't get Undo capability. A couple of editors that can do disk editing are UltraEdit and EditPad Pro, but they're both not free.

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up vote 0 down vote

EmEditor. Not free (unfortunately), but can edit large files on-disc. I switched to it from TextPad because of the latter's lack of Unicode support (in this day and age, tsk).

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up vote 0 down vote

EditPlus seems better

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up vote 0 down vote

To watch log files, I use mTail, which is especially suited to the task and fairly good.

Assuming you don't want to edit the log. If you want to edit it or edit large files then I've been very happy with EditPlus

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up vote 0 down vote

I tried many text viewers and finally settled on V - The File Viewer as the fastest.
This a shareware at $20 (I paid).

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up vote 0 down vote

On Windows i prefer Notepad++ (free) and Textpad (Shareware) for Large Files. For keeping up-to-date with logfiles mTail or baretail depending on licencing conditions.

On OSX if you want something free try TextWrangler. Tail comes for free there together with the OS.

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up vote 0 down vote

UltraEdit is the best choice when I comes to text files on Windows. It can open text files without size limitations but costs money.

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up vote 0 down vote

ConTEXT is wicked fast.

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up vote 0 down vote

try programmers notepad. it also ia a nifty editor.

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