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When do you need to actually open and edit a 500 mb ascii file instead of just processing it with one of the many Unix command line tools that can handle a 500 mb file just fine? (I realize it hypothetically does happen, the question refers to frequency.)

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XYZ files from Multibeam surveys. Windows user. Sometimes I need to look at the contents of the file - EG: remove x number of "headers" from the ASCII file.

when you are on windows?

There are alternatives to UNIX command line tools available on Windows (such as Powershell, for example), as well as ports of them (Cygwin etc). An editor as a replacement for those isn't really the best way to go.

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