Re: [PATCH] Re: startup speed (or lack thereof)

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@eazel.com> writes:

> If removing the line and column number incrementing code really makes
> that much performance difference, perhaps we should reconsider doing
> this tracking. Or perhaps tracking only the line number and not the
> column number would be sufficient; that's all other langauges provide
> in error messages, and much of the time the column number is just
> noise.

I think line and column number information is very important.  I run
in an Emacs-environment where this information is used to highlight
the erring expression.  But also in the shell, I use both line and
column numbers.

As I wrote in a previous letter, there is a solution, however:

Rewrite the reader to operate directly on the port interface,
i.e. directly on the port buffer.  This way, line and column numbers
can be updated much more seldom, *and* we'll gain extra efficiency
because of not needing to call scm_getc per character.