Large text file editing GEM

Whenever I find a hidden gem utility, I feel like I need to share.
Granted - I'm a utility freak. I have it on my todo list to post a few on utilities that I use, but this is for later.

Today I just wanted to mention one utility that I bumped into.

I was on a 45 minute call with someone who sent me a log file to view, and for 30 minutes out of the 45 was trying to view a 0.5G text file, crashing all possible programs - notepad, notepad++, word, wordpad. The guy on the other side of the line said he opened it with Textpad, but that's commercial and for text editors I really think there's enough good free stuff out there.

Then I entered "view large text files" in Google, and among all sorts of suggestions to split large files, on one of the sites, in one of the comments I found this amazing piece of software called "Programmer's File Editor", or PFE version 1.01 (catchy...). Found it here: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/

This software took less than 2 seconds to open this file, that all other software crashed after a few minutes of cranking at it.

The interesting bit is that this software works on Windows 3x... It was written in 92 by a guy on the Lancaster UK University staff, and was last updated in 99. There's still a note in the readme asking you to report any Y2K bugs if you find them...
Amazingly, it still not only works like a charm, but it is extremely fast and efficient opening files that are larger than what used to be the average memory size of computers back when it was written (maybe that explains why it's so efficient...)

If you're looking for a solution to open huge text files - I highly recommend it. In fact - go download it right now. Who knows when this 17 year old will vanish from the web completely...