RE: Several seconds of delay when exiting Emacs

[Drew Adams]

> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (quit)
> save-place-forget-unreadable-files()
> save-place-alist-to-file()
> save-place-kill-emacs-hook()
> run-hooks(kill-emacs-hook)
> kill-emacs()
> save-buffers-kill-emacs(nil)
> save-buffers-kill-terminal(nil)
> call-interactively(save-buffers-kill-terminal nil nil)

I know nothing about `saveplace.el', but looking around a little it appears that
that is the library involved here.  Take a look at it.   Look at the values of
your `save-place-*' user options (e.g., `save-place-limit').  Look at what's in
your file `save-place-file' (by default, `~/.emacs-places').

If you have lots of places recorded (for lots of files), or lots of files that
need to be checked for readability (see `save-place-skip-check-regexp'), then
that could explain why Emacs takes a while to quit.

This is what `save-place-forget-unreadable-files' does, according to its doc
string:

  Remove unreadable files from `save-place-alist'.
  For each entry in the alist, if `file-readable-p' returns
  nil for the filename, remove the entry.  Save the new alist
  (as the first pair may have changed) back to `save-place-alist'.

(`save-place-alist' is the list of places to save to `save-place-file'.)