Tino Calancha <tino.calancha@gmail.com> writes:

> Do you mean something like this?
>
> {
>    Lisp_Object tail = list;
>    Lisp_Object fn = NILP (testfn) ? Qequal : testfn;
>      FOR_EACH_TAIL (tail)
>        {
>          Lisp_Object car = XCAR (tail);
>          if (CONSP (car) && !NILP (call2 (fn, (XCAR (car)), key)))
>            return car;
>        }
>
>    CHECK_LIST_END (tail, list);
>    return Qnil;
> }
>
> ;; This is shorter but now the default case, because the call2, is less 
> ;; efficient than just using Fequal, right?

I like your version more, but I also thought that it would be slower for
the default case.

I ran benchmark-run with the first version:

  (setq alist (mapcar (lambda (e) `(,(intern e) . ,e))
                      (locate-file-completion-table
       	               load-path (get-load-suffixes) "" nil t)))
      
  (benchmark-run (assoc 'absent alist))
  (0.00023356 0 0.0)
  (0.00016584 0 0.0)
  (0.000165243 0 0.0)
  (0.000164741 0 0.0)
  (0.000240754 0 0.0)
  (0.000104102 0 0.0)

and with your version:

  (0.000556587 0 0.0)
  (0.000238677 0 0.0)
  (0.000498506 0 0.0)
  (0.000527675 0 0.0)
  (0.00064989 0 0.0)
  (0.000520543 0 0.0)

Cheers,
Nico