Is there a good emacs mode for displaying and editing huge delimiter separated files?
I've been searching without finding for a while for a mode that makes editing huge tab/comma/colon-separated files easy. I've been wanting a mode that ensures that columns always line up, just like org-mode tables. I know I can easily turn the whole file into an org-mode table and then turn it back when I'm done, but that gets really slow with huge files, and is a hassle for quick edits (there's also the problem of what happens if a field contains a vertical bar). So does anyone know of either a mode or a built-in function/variable I can use so that I can get a file like
col1\tcol2\tcol3
very long column1\tcol2\tcol3
displayed like
col1 col2 col3
very long column1 col2 col3
? (perhaps with some color lining the separator)
Answer
Perhaps you could tell us what you've already found and rejected?
If you've been searching, then you must surely have seen http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CsvMode ? You don't mention it, or say why it wasn't any good, though.
SES (Simple Emacs Spreadsheet) might be a useful approach:
C-hig (ses) RET
You can create a ses-mode buffer and yank tab-delimited data into it (that's the import mechanism).
It's probably more hassle than you were after, though, and I'm not sure how well it will perform with "huge" files.