Re: Possible problem with sudden shortening of very large files by an external process

Gary Bickford wrote:

> I often misuse vim to view log files while debugging batch jobs. It is
> very handy for moving around in the file, viewing the colorized content
> and searching for relevant text. These log files can be from several
> thousand to millions of lines. Vim does a remarkably good job of
> handling these files. However, sometimes it has a problem when the
> batch job is re-run while I am viewing the file in vim, and the log file
> is replaced by a much shorter one.
>
> When vim tries to reload the file, sometimes I get a very long series of
> red warning messages - I can't repeat the event just now, so can't
> provide the content of the warning, but I think it has to do with
> missing lines.
>
> This succession of warnings can be inconvenient when there are several
> million to report, or even a few thousand! And very occasionally vim
> hangs (apparently), or just gives up the ghost and dies. I think
> problems are more likely when the 'present location' is far down the
> file.
>
> Considering the abuse I am giving vim this is within the range of
> acceptable behavior, but I thought it was worth mentioning as an issue
> anyway. From the behavior, I speculate that vim has found the present
> line to be after the end of file, is trying to move the line pointer
> upwards one line at a time, and is finding no data there each time.

It would help a lot to know what the text of that error message is.

If it is " ml_get: cannot find line {N}" then the cause might be hard to
find. A stack trace would be helpful then.

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