Problem

Currently, cspell does not provide a built-in way to skip files based on their size. When working with repositories that contain large files (e.g., JSON/CSV data files), cspell will attempt to process them, which can lead to:

• Performance degradation and long processing times
• Memory issues when reading very large files
• Unnecessary spell-checking of files that don't benefit from it

Solution

Add a maxFileSize configuration option that automatically skips files exceeding a specified size threshold.

Configuration File Example

cspell.json:

{
  "version": "0.2",
  "maxFileSize": 1048576,  // 1MB in bytes
  "ignorePaths": ["node_modules/**"]
}

cspell.config.js:

module.exports = {
  maxFileSize: 1024 * 1024,  // 1MB
  // or with human-readable format
  maxFileSize: '1MB',
};

Command Line Flag Example

cspell lint --max-file-size 1048576 .
# or with human-readable format
cspell lint --max-file-size 1MB .

Behavior

• Files exceeding maxFileSize should be automatically skipped
• Skipped files should be reported in verbose mode: Skipped: large-file.json (size: 5MB, max: 1MB)
• The default value should be unlimited (current behavior) for backward compatibility
• Size could be specified in bytes or with units (KB, MB, GB)

Alternatives

Users currently need to manually exclude large files using:

• --exclude patterns (requires knowing specific file paths)
• ignorePaths in configuration (requires maintaining patterns)
• .gitignore integration (not always suitable)

These workarounds are not ideal because they require manual maintenance and don't automatically handle files based on size.

Additional Context

No response

Code of Conduct

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