Re: Is Elisp really that slow? (was: Why is Elisp slow?)

[tomas]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2019 at 05:26:10PM -0700, Samuel Wales wrote:

[...]

> well, for me as a mere user, i just want elisp [per se] to run faster.
> maybe that has 1000 definitions, but the 3 things that i have read in
> this thread wfm as PERFECT targets for speeding up and would make
> emacs even better for me.

Buy a faster computer, then :-)

>   1] org mode timestamp [aka "daily/weekly"] agenda to complete faster
> for a 2 day [...]

Dunno about that. Perhaps Org has sub-optimal algorithms there?
Why don't you get your hands dirty and profile the whole thing?

>   2] while re-search-forward do replace-match [iirc] [my question
> which stefan nicely addressed] to work faster.  this is a tight loop
> called frequently.

AFAIR the bottleneck here wasn't Elisp at all, but regexp match,
which is written totally... in C (actually there's a mini-language
layer in-between). So the totally wrong target for this thread:
Elisp ain't slow here because it isn't in the equation at all.

Do I remember incorrectly?

>   3] elisp to be much faster so that new ideas can be done.
> 
> by "per se" i mean, perhaps confusingly, mere users program in a lisp,
> preferably elisp, as opposed to a strange new syntax or c-like stuff
> or elisp-like c.

And this is so generic that it's best served by a generic programming
language, which Elisp isn't, and for a good reason.

If you pose a question, you should be ready to expect that the
answer is... "it depends". That's how learning starts :-)

Cheers
-- tomás

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