Re: list-print-separator

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:05:43 +0100 Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton@gmail.com> wrote: 

AM> On Mon 25 Apr 2011, Stefan Monnier wrote:
SM> Hmm... I wouldn't try to compare the speed of `print' with that of `pp'
SM> since they do very different amounts of work and are implemented in
SM> languages whose performance is very different, but there's clearly room
SM> for improvement in pp's speed.
>>> I want to print out a large ELisp data structure prettily.  The Gnus
>>> newsrc.eld, for example, or the Gnus registry hashtable.  I'll use
>>> whatever makes it happen as fast as possible.
>> 
>> The newsrc.eld has never been pretty and it's never been a problem, AFAIK.
>> Not sure what's the "Gnus registry", so I can't comment on that.

AM> I use somthing like this for a prettier newsrc.eld:

AM> (add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook
AM>           (lambda ()
AM>             (save-excursion
AM>               (goto-char (point-min))
AM>               (save-match-data
AM>                 (while (re-search-forward "(\\\"\\| ((\\| (nn" nil t)
AM>                   (replace-match "\n  \\&" t)))
AM>               (delete-trailing-whitespace))))

AM> It may not be perfect, but it does make it a great deal more readable.

Me too, but that doesn't work for new users, it relies on regular
expressions, and it's slow.  My suggestion for the above was basically
to make `list-print-separator' "\n \\" but I will instead work on `pp'
as Stefan has requested.

Ted