On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, David Wetzel wrote:

> I have this file:
> 
> -rw-r--r--  1 dave  wheel  247145803 Oct 28 06:07 Kurs.db
> 
> if I do
> 
> grep creationDate Kurs.db | wc -l

> it is simply death. no ping response no nothing.
> 
> But that works:
> wc -l Kurs.db  returns
>  9373590 Kurs.db

The discussion surrounding PR bin/8681 may interest you:

<http://www.NetBSD.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=8681>

In short, `grep' seems to have a problem with large binary files, 
and not only on NetBSD. At the moment, there is no simple solution 
or work-around.