Re: Using Emacs Lisp for script writing

[Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl>]

Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> writes:

>>> I use clisp for all scripting, interactive and not.
>>> Common Lisp is more powerful than Emacs Lisp and clisp is faster than
>>> emacs.
>>
>> I have been experimenting with clisp. But I think that Emacs Lisp does a
>> pretty good job. I translated a script I wrote in Emacs Lisp to CL. The
>> Emacs Lisp version needed 51 seconds on a certain data set. When using
>> clisp with the converted code, clisp needs 79 seconds. That is more as
>> 50% longer.
>>
>
> did you compile the CL code?
> if it is a script, you might want to add "-C" to the "#!/.../clisp" line
> to enable on-the-fly compilation.

Yes, I did. I call my code mostly with clisp -C. But your tip is
valuable. When calling as a script without the -C the script takes 2:35
and with the -C it takes 1:19. The only problem is that I always use:
    #!/usr/bin/env clisp

That is not possible with -C, so now I have to use:
    #!/usr/bin/clisp -C

It is not a big deal, but when the script is put on another system and
on this system clisp is in another location, the script has to be
modified (or a link has to be created). But halving the execution time
is important enough.

-- 
Cecil Westerhof
Senior Software Engineer
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof