Re: Buffer size limitation in insdel.c

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 05:40:39 -0400
> 
>     The reason for this code is that many places use an int to hold buffer
>     positions.  All these places are bugs; they should use EMACS_INT
>     instead.  This code hides those bugs.
> 
> I'd say it prevents them from really being bugs.

Such measures are appropriate for a released version, not for a
development version.  In development, you don't sweep bugs under the
carpet.  You let them crash the program, and then you debug them.

> I doubt your physical memory will support very many 2-gig strings.

On my daytime job, I work with a server running RH GNU/Linux.  That
server is a 64-bit machine with 14GB of physical memory (plus the
appropriate amount of swap); it routinely produces log files between
2GB and 5GB.  It is part of my job to browse those logs to diagnose
problems.  I don't like falling back on Less for browsing those logs,
as it is a major annoyance when the logs were compressed into a
.tar.gz or tar.bz2 archive.