spamfilteraccount@gmail.com wrote:

Stefan Monnier wrote:

Actually, font-locking *is* implemented in C.  The elisp part usually takes

a negligible amount of time.  The problem start appearing when the

functionality of the C code is not sufficient and you start trying to parse

the code in elisp, which is slow.

Good to know. I thought font-lock was implemented in elisp and didn't

bother to check.

Precisely speaking...

The code that determines what rules are used to font-lock text is in

Elisp.

The regexp engine that finds the things to be font-locked is in the

core of Emacs.

The colourisation is implemented in the Emacs core.