maximum array size

[new fish]

hey guys
i was experimenting with writing some simple encryption program with help and advice from randem!!

anyway what the prog does is read in a file into a byte array
so that for a file of 10 bytes the array has 10 entries

so just there i tried to encrypt a film on my computer and got
runtime error 7 out of memory
when i clicked debug the array which was to contain all the bytes showed up yellow

so i did a quick serach to see how big an array can be
and came across (2^31)-1 which is just over 2 billion.

but my film was only 1gb which is 1 billion bytes which should fit within an array with a capacity of over 2 billion entries?

its not an issue with my system ram as i have 2gb of ram?

anyway i would be interested to hear any insights on this.
i have a feeling that i could rewrite it so that the array only loads in 100mb at a time, does its work, then loads in the next 100mb etc etc etc. i suppose that approach would be better! in case i want to encrypt a 10gb file!!

let me know what you know!! cheers-jim

[Mxjerrett]

It sounds like it is running an infinite loop or something. If the array was out of memory it would say overflow. Try debuging to see where it is snagging.

[new fish]

i dont think its an infinite loop, it works fine for smaller files, i've just tested a zip archie which is 150mb, i'm pretty sure that the array has run out of space, just wondering if anyone else had experienced it!

[randem]

You would need to read the file into smaller chunks to process and loop thru the file until all chunks are done. Then it would process all size files.