Re: [bug-patch] Expected memory usage for patching large files?

[Andreas Grünbacher]

Justin,

2014-06-08 6:19 GMT+02:00 Justin Delegard <address@hidden>:
> When running patch on large files, I'm surprised to see that the heap usage
> of patch increases to roughly the size of the file being patched.  Is that
> expected?

yes.

> Is there any combination of options that can patch with a fixed memory usage?

Normally, patch will try to read in the entire input file. When that
fails and patch runs out of memory, "plan B" is to be very
conservative with memory. You can force patch into "plan B" with
option --debug=16 but I wouldn't recommend it; the OS's virtual memory
management will do a much better job than that.

Andreas