Downloading Large Files -- Feedback?

[Steven D'Aprano]

mwt wrote:

> Pardon my ignorance here, but could you give me an example of what
> would constitute file that is unreasonably or dangerously large? I'm
> running python on a ubuntu box with about a gig of ram.

1GB of RAM plus (say) 2GB of virtual memory = 3GB in total.

Your OS and other running processes might be using 
(say) 1GB. So 2GB might be the absolute limit.

Of course your mileage will vary, and in practice your 
machine will probably start slowing down long before 
that limit.


> Also, do you know of any online examples of the kind of robust,
> real-world code you're describing? 

It isn't written in C, but get your hands on wget. It 
is probably already on your Linux distro, but if not, 
check it out here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html



-- 
Steven.