Large file (vsc-lfs) README

This extensions allows you to (in a sane way) work around the restriction described as vscode issue #27100 and feature request #31078. So you can open large files (e.g. a few hundred MBs) and they get passed to the extension host / to your extensions.

Note: Use with care! The vs-code authors decided to impose the size restriction for a good reason. Use it only when you do really need it and not for every file.

Features

• open large (>50MB) files and still allow your other extensions to process it.
• replacement features allows to search and replace file content at opening. See below for setting vsc-lfs.replacements.

Usage

Use the command "open large file..." and select the file you want in the following dialog. The dialog contains a file filter that can be customized (see settings).

Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following settings:

• vsc-lfs.fileFilters: Array of strings that contain the file filters to apply for the open large file dialog. Default to ["txt", "TXT", "log", LOG"].
• vsc-lfs.reReadTimeout: Time after which a re-read takes place. If your file doesn't open try to increase this value. Defaults to 5s.
• vsc-lfs.replacements: Optional array of objects with name and filters property. Filters is a array of objects with search and replace properties. If replacements are defined at open large file... command you can select any of the replacements. The selected ones will be applied as search and replace line-by-line. Search and replace must not increase the file size but the intention is to shrink the file. search is a javascript regular expression and replace can contain special replacement patterns like $& or $n. For details see Specifying a string as a parameter E.g.

[{
  "name": "shorten line and date",
  "filters": [
    {
      "search": "line: (\\d*)$", // regex to search lines ending with 'line: <number>'. Capturing the number.
      "replace": "l:$1" // replace with l:<number>
    },
    { // replace all ' date:' with ' d:'
      "search": " date:",
      "replace": " d:"
    }
  ]
},
{
  "name": "delete all debug lines",
  "filters": [
    "search": "^.*\\[DEBUG\\].*$", // full line with [DEBUG]. [ ] need to be escaped in reg exp.
    "replace": "" // replace with empty line
  ]
}]

Note: take care to escape \ properly in json as \\.

Note: currently the search/replace is applied line by line.

Known Issues

• Currently the files are opened read-only even if they are not from the original filesystem.

Contributions

Any and all test, code or feedback contributions are welcome. Open an issue or create a pull request to make this extension work better for all.

Donations are welcome! (Contact me for commercial use or different license).

GitHub ♥︎ Sponsors are welcome!

Planned features

• Add autoApplyIf option to replacements for e.g. above a certain file size or file name patterns.
• Remove readonly restriction.
• Investigate: seems like file changes are already supported. VS Code seems to understand our uri format and triggers a readFile on file change. Support watch for removing/deleted files.
• Add debouncing / delayed updates features to limit the amount of file changes reflected to extensions.

Release Notes

See Changelog