So based on that (typical?) line of log data, let's say it's 90 bytes/line, so a 5 MB file will be close to 56,000 lines of text.

Now, what does the person looking at the browser intend to do with this display? Is the user looking for something in particular? Maybe just the oldest log entries, or just the newest ones, or just the ones that have some particular properties?

If you figure out what the client needs to do with this information, you should focus on providing the particular subset of the log file that will directly support that task, so that you deliver an appropriate quantity of data, instead of delivering all the data.

The appropriate quantity for manual inspection in a browser display will probably be a lot less than 5 MB (hopefully closer to 50 KB); then your task is to write the correct kind of filter that will deliver just that subset of data, and if the filter runs reasonably fast on the server, the slowness problem at the browser end will go probably away.

If the client needs a complete download of the log file, then set it up as an ftp transfer to the client's local disk, instead of sending it to the browser display.

In reply to Re^3: Opening a Large Text File by graff
in thread Opening a Large Text File by Anonymous Monk

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