Re: Buffer size exceeded

[Tassilo Horn]

Merciadri Luca <Luca.Merciadri@student.ulg.ac.be> writes:

Hi Merciadri,

> I just used `G f path_to_my_mbox_files/my_mbox_file' to add a group
> with one of my mbox files, but I encounter `Buffer size exceeded.'
> Okay, I have a lot of mails, and the mbox file is ~2 Gig, but why is
> not Gnus able to cope with it? Is there any alternative? (I do not
> want to cut this file into different pieces.)

That's an restriction on the maximal buffer size in emacs, and has
nothing to do with gnus.  With older emacsen, the limit was 256MB on a
32 bit architecture.  With a newer emacs or a 64 bit system, this should
be more.

Evaluate this code to get the maximal MB a buffer may have:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(/ most-positive-fixnum 1024 1024) ;; <== C-x C-e here!
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

For me it says that the limit is at 2199023255551 MB.  That's more than
an ext4 file system can handle. ;-)

I don't know if the variable `most-positive-fixnum' exists in older
emacs versions, but evaluating this should result in the same:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(let ((i 1024))
  (while (> i 0)
    (setq i (* i 2)))
  (message "Emacs can handle files of %s MB size"
           (/ (1- i) 1024 1024))) ;; <== C-x C-e here!
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Bye,
Tassilo