Re: (seeks while reading) Re: Performance, argh

[Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>]

> I have heard people say that ports need a rewrite, my guess is that
> it would be better to avoid the C library routines fopen() etc.. and
> to do the buffering in guile instead. The other thing that I was thinking
> is to do the line numbering in a second pass rather than at the same time
> as normal reads. This is because the line numbering is not always
> wanted and causes quite a slowdown. My idea was to just scan out the whole
> file and make a table that relates seek number to line number then
> do the reading without worrying about line numbers.

For the folks who missed it, Gary Houston did rewrite the port system,
and the buffering is now done in Guile instead.

Line and column counting are still primitive, though.  It might be
possible to implement them as a special-purpose port, layered on top
of an ordinary port.