"Not enough storage is available" when comparing huge files

[tbessie]

I'm comparing 2 2gb files, and I get the message "Not enough storage is available".

Is BC3 limited to the amount of RAM available for file comparisons? That would be truly BAD.

Is there something I'm missing here?

- Tim

[Aaron]

Hello,

What type of file are you attempting to compare, and in which Session Type? A Folder Compare should be able to perform a Binary or CRC scan on the files, but those files may be over the limit for our file session types. Here is a KB article we've found on the tested limits so far:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo..._maxfilev3.php

[tbessie]

Hello,

What type of file are you attempting to compare, and in which Session Type? A Folder Compare should be able to perform a Binary or CRC scan on the files, but those files may be over the limit for our file session types. Here is a KB article we've found on the tested limits so far:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo..._maxfilev3.php

These are two large binary files. I used a Hex compare (tho' tried with a Text compare at first).

Just curious, then, but why is a file comparison limited in size? Theoretically, all cumulative data about file differences should be able to be kept, itself, in a file, and only a couple of pointers kept to the current view kept in RAM.

Of course, I'm not designing my own diff program, so I haven't had to tackle other problems that this approach might take. Is there any plan for adding comparing files/folders of any size, at a reduction of speed due to offloading some of the comparison info to temp files?

- Tim

[Chris]

Tim,

The memory limit is hit when BC3 runs into the maximum address space for a 32-bit process. As stated in the above link, the maximum file size supported in the Hex Compare is about 700 MB.

The size limit won't increase significantly until we release a 64-bit version of BC, which is still a ways off at this point (we're waiting for our development tools to support 64-bit).