I've been noticing this problem for a bit and figured it'd get fixed but it hasn't so here is a bug report. With the Emacs 25 pretests, it takes waaaaayyy too long to edit some C code. To reproduce the problem use the attached file (taken from the Emacs source code) and run: emacs -Q config.h M-x goto-line RET 1661 RET / / On my six-year-old desktop the second '/' takes about 10 seconds to echo. This sort of thing makes Emacs effectively unusable for editing config.h. In GNU Emacs 25.0.92.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.18.7) of 2016-03-02 built on penguin.cs.ucla.edu Repository revision: 100346aa226e4eacc56f390c099bb9aab585b5f4 Windowing system distributor 'Fedora Project', version 11.0.11800000 Configured using: 'configure --enable-gcc-warnings' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GCONF GSETTINGS NOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: C/l Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t abbrev-mode: t Recent messages: config.h has auto save data; consider M-x recover-this-file Mark set You can run the command ‘goto-line’ with M-g g Mark set Undo! Mark set Undo! Mark set Mark saved where search started Auto-saving...done Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message dired format-spec rfc822 mml mml-sec epg epg-config gnus-util mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util help-fns mail-prsvr mail-utils character-fold misearch multi-isearch cl-extra help-mode cc-mode cc-fonts easymenu cc-guess cc-menus cc-cmds cc-styles cc-align cc-engine cc-vars cc-defs cl-loaddefs pcase cl-lib time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese charscript case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote dbusbind inotify dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 123955 4665) (symbols 48 21742 0) (miscs 40 57 290) (strings 32 28264 16097) (string-bytes 1 748499) (vectors 16 14562) (vector-slots 8 502379 4556) (floats 8 166 20) (intervals 56 4059 0) (buffers 976 12) (heap 1024 29227 2318))