There are always comments like "you can slurp the file as long as it's not too big" or "becareful not to slurp a really big file or you'll be in trouble".
So what I'd like to survey is what would be what the safest
max size of a file that one should ever slurp and why?
(IE if you have 128 MB of RAM and try to slurp a 768MB file that'd cause issues)
(IE if the max file size on your system is 2GB you may have isseus slurping a 4 GB file.)
This question is pretty hardware dependent. On my Dual G5 2 Ghz with 2 GB RAM, I don't have to worry too much about what I slurp. That won't be the case for a lot of machines though. I can even imagine situations where it wouldn't be wise to slurp big files, even if the machine could handle it.
If I had to come up with a solid "guideline" to tell people, it would probably be don't worry too much about slurping a file that's a fourth of your RAM or less. I must stress that is a "guideline" though, not a safe rule.
Generally, my decision process goes like this.
Do I only need one line at a time? If yes, don't slurp.
Could I read a "group of lines" at a time? (Generally with something like "paragraph mode".) If yes, go that way.
Is what I'm doing a lot easier if I slurp the file? If no, DON'T DO IT! There's no point.
If yes, I finally examine if there is a good reason I shouldn't slurp the file? (Execution hardware not up to it. Multiple copies of the process will be run in parallel. Whatever.)
By this point, if I haven't talked myself out of it, I slurp the file.
How much you know can be a big factor too. If you're going to run the script on your machine, once every night as a cron job or as a one shot data munge, you know a lot and should feel pretty safe. If you're going to upload the script to the CPAN and encourage people to run it everywhere all the time, even on their toaster, try to keep the memory/processor footprint as reasonable as possible, which may rule out slurping.
I think the important thing to stress is that it's a choice. It often makes things easier, so don't be ashamed to make that choice, when it does and won't hurt anything. However, be aware that it COULD be a bad choice. Think it through.
James
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