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I'd like to be able to view the contents of a very large text file. A bunch of people on here have asked the question in the context of an editor, but I don't need to edit, just view. I'd like to be able to jump to any point in a multi-gigabyte file instantly. (This should be possible if accurate line numbering is not required.)

"less" sort-of works, but the interface is clunky and the commands are hard to remember. Something with a decent GUI would be better.

Anyone know of such a thing?

ccleve
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    You might want to consider GVim a gui to vim. Though it is an editor but you can use it as a viewer alongwith the functions you wish like jumping to a part of file or to a line etc. – Raphael Aug 13 '16 at 18:01
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    Have you tried nano? – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Aug 13 '16 at 18:02
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    How would you define the point to jump to? And why don't you want to use an editor for this? That's pretty much what they're for. – terdon Aug 13 '16 at 18:11
  • You could jump to a point using an absolute byte offset, or more likely just move the scrollbar to the right spot. An editor would be fine, but there aren't many that can do this. Haven't found one. – ccleve Aug 13 '16 at 21:25
  • Have you tried emacs or gvim? Those two are probably the best editors around and both can deal with large files. I don't think you'll ever be able to "jump to any point in a multi-gigabyte file instantly" though, you'll always need to load the thing into RAM and that will be slow. This sort of thing is more foten done by using commandline tools to extract the relevant regions of the file you want to see. – terdon Aug 14 '16 at 11:50
  • Are you trying to edit a binary? – Anwar Aug 14 '16 at 16:37

2 Answers2

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glogg - Smart interactive log explorer using Qt

Edit: glogg can easily be installed using your favorite package manager after first enabling the universe repository. Once this step is complete you can simply issue the command apt install glogg or in the usual fashion with the software center.

Main features

Runs on Unix-like systems, Windows and Mac thanks to Qt
Provides a second window showing the result of the current search
Supports grep/egrep like regular expressions
Colorizes the log and the search results
Displays a context view of where in the log the lines of interest are
Is fast and reads the file directly from disk, without loading it into memory
Follows a log that is written to disk in real time
Allow to insert marks in the logs to interesting lines
Supports vim/less like keyboard commands to move around the file
Is open source, released under the GPL

Sources: http://glogg.bonnefon.org/description.html

Elder Geek
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k-h
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glogg is not active anymore.

Use its forked project klogg for the same purpose.

wsdzbm
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