Recent recentf slowdown?

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

Since updating to GNU Emacs 23.1.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
2.14.4) of 2009-06-23 on escher I've twice experienced a long pause
during startup, apparently while the recentf list is being cleaned up.
The *Messages* buffer shows this after the second occurrence:

Loading /home/steve/.emacs.d/.recentf...done
Cleaning up the recentf list...
File /mnt/etc/samba/smb.conf removed from the recentf list
File /mnt/etc/samba/ removed from the recentf list [3 times]
Cleaning up the recentf list...done (2 removed)

During startup, when the third of these messages is displayed in the
echo area, Emacs appears to just stop: no redisplay, keyboard or mouse
response at all, but also no noticeable increase in CPU activity.  The
first time this happened I thought Emacs was hanging and killed the
process.  When I restarted, it came up as (fast as) usual.  Now (the
next day) it happened again and this time I waited longer.  I neglected
to look at the time but I guess it was at least a minute, maybe two.  I
was just about to try attaching the Emacs process to gdb when it resumed
and completed startup, displaying the last two messages above.  It
appears to be functioning normally since then.

According to the ChangeLog there hasn't been anything change to recentf
for a long time.  Perhaps the pause is due to the tramp update, though I
was not using tramp to visit the file being cleaned up when Emacs
paused.  Has anyone else experienced this or does anyone have an idea
what the cause could be?

Steve Berman