large file

How to edit and navigate chunks of a giant text file on Mac/Linux

For most log and text files, simply opening them up in $editor_of_your_choice works fine. If the file is less than a few hundred megabytes, most modern editors (and even some IDEs) shouldn't choke on them too badly.

But what if you have a 1, 2, or 10 GB logfile or giant text file you need to search through? Finding a line with a bit of text is simple enough (and not too slow) if you're using grep. But if you want to grab a chunk of the file and edit that chunk, or split the file into smaller files, there's a simple process that I use, based on this Stack Overflow answer: