Emacs `hangs' when doing `replace-string' in 46 MB file

[Christian Schlauer]

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

Hello,

I have a 46 MB ASCII file that contains five TAB-separated columns
with numbers. The first line contains labels for the columns. The file
looks like this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Column 1        Column 2        Column 3        Column 4        Column 5
0,643680        0,000139        -0,000458       0,000000        1,000000
*[ 861437 more lines like this... ]*
162,597641      0,066378        -0,084318       239589,800000   11979,000000
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I tried to replace all commas with periods by means of `M-x
replace-string RET , RET . RET'.

After 15 seconds, the frame of Emacs started to flash (visible-bell's
value is t), and this continued for several minutes without any
change. The CPU load was very low during these minutes, as low as 0 %
or 1 %. Killing Emacs with the task manager killed Emacs.

I repeated that with an Emacs started with `-q --no-site-file', and
the same thing happens, but this time, the Emacs frame didn't flash of
course (visible-bell's value is nil), but the built-in "speaker" of my
computer started to beep continuously. It continued to beep even after
killing Emacs, so I had to restart Windows...

Before that, the same happened in Emacs 21.3, that's why I tried CVS
Emacs.

In GNU Emacs 21.3.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.0.2195)
 of 2004-07-26 on BERATUNG4
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.3) --cflags -I../../jpeg-6b-1/include 
-I../../libpng-1.2.4-1/include -I../../tiff-3.5.7/include 
-I../../xpm-nox-4.2.0/include -I../../zlib-1.1.4-1/include'

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: ENG
  locale-coding-system: cp1252
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  tool-bar-mode: t
  encoded-kbd-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t

Recent input:
C-x C-f <C-backspace> <C-backspace> <C-backspace> <C-backspace> 
<C-backspace> f t p SPC t e m SPC S C " <backspace> 
2 - SPC SPC SPC SPC <return> y M-x r e p o r t SPC 
SPC SPC <return>

Recent messages:
Loading mwheel...done
(C:\emacs-21.3.50\bin\emacs.exe -q --no-site-file)
Loading encoded-kb...done
Loading tool-bar...done
Loading image...done
Loading tooltip...done
File SC2-500-10-1.lop is large (46MB), really open? (y or n) 
Loading emacsbug...done

-- 
Christian Schlauer