@xomx

Regarding your suggestion, here is RC2 with some enhancement:
https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/22446/notepad-v8-2-2-release-candidate-2

1. If lack of memory is the problem, then you should be hearing from Windows to that effect as it tries to help, usually by closing something you’d rather leave open.
2. This huge file editing ability seems to come with several significant caveats, which makes me think it should be something which has to be specifically enabled, and when you try to do so, you have to acknowledge the caveats (or you’ll just get multiple reports about them.)

when your big file does not contain any EOLs (CR/LF) - Scintilla limitation

That would explain it. When I added newlines, I could open a >2GB file.

• before testing switch off: word wrapping, session snapshots and periodic backups, backups on save
• if you want to test writing to a large file, switch off also the auto-completion feature (@Ekopalypse )

There is currently a 200MB file syntax styling limit, so do not expect colorized Scintilla output for e.g. a 201MB *.cpp file:

• up to 200MB you can expect 2x filesize + some extra memory consumption
• above the 200MB it should be only 1x filesize + some extra memory

Crash is expected, when your big file does not contain any EOLs (CR/LF) - Scintilla limitation. So e.g. an empty 2GB+ file full of NUL-bytes crashes.

Memory spikes are ok.

Do not try to open a big file on a system, where the available physical memory is lower than approx. 2GB + filesize. This can easily lead to unresponsive system, because of the OS virtual memory mechanism.

Since I don’t need to edit large files for anything I do (home or work), this was more trying to help Don out, rather than see if I can “finally” edit large files with Notepad++.

Me too :-), sorry, I should have answered Don directly to make it clear.
I also don’t see ever having to use files that large, and yes, it could be that the crashes occur because memory is running low. I assume that is most likely the cause.

One thing I noticed is that Npp initially allocated ~5.8GB of RAM, but then settled down to ~2.6GB.

Hmm, I only have 4G remaining of my 8G total. It spikes to 100%, drops down to about 60% (so still using some for this file), then crashes. It might be that Windows and Notepad++ together couldn’t come to an agreement about how to allocate memory and page it successfully. So I might just be resource-limited, hence my crashes.

(I also tried turning off auto-backups, but it still crashed.)

Since I don’t need to edit large files for anything I do (home or work), this was more trying to help Don out, rather than see if I can “finally” edit large files with Notepad++.

If large-file editing is working for some users, that’s significantly better than “64-bit Notepad++ is incapable of loading a file >2GB, for any users, by design”.

One thing I noticed is that Npp initially allocated ~5.8GB of RAM, but then settled down to ~2.6GB.

I took a fresh unzip of v8.2.2-64bit portable, and created a file with exactly 3e9 characters (codes 32-127, so nothing fancy), called it big.bin, and tried to open with either dragging big.bin into the Notepad++ window, or using File>Open, or in Windows explorer dragging the big.bin onto the portable notepad++.exe. However I do it, Notepad++ warns me that it might take several minutes, I say yes, then about 30-60 sec later, Notepad++ crashes.

I tried renaming the file to big.txt instead, to make sure that no syntax highlighter was trying to fire, and it still crashed. :-(

Sorry I don’t have better news for you.