Bug#385352: diff: uses huge amounts of memory when doing a unified diff between two huge text files (fwd)

[Santiago Vila]

Hello.

Received this from the debian bug system. According to the submitter,
the bug may be reproduced in both diffutils 2.8.1 and 2.8.7.

I'm not sure this is the kind of bug that may be "fixed", however,
but I forward it here just in case.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:17:55 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Bug#385352: diff: uses huge amounts of memory when doing a
 unified diff between two huge text files

Package: diff
Version: 2.8.7-0.2
Severity: wishlist

diff uses huge amounts of memory when doing a unified diff between two huge 
text files
Just do:
diff -u hugefile1.txt hugefile2.txt

The problem is that the diff doesn't get done since the computer has not
that much virtual memory.

[...]