bug#961: 23.0.60; Excess consing visiting files

bug#961: 23.0.60; Excess consing visiting files

[Richard M. Stallman]

I have noticed that there are times when just typing o in Dired
to visit a fairly small file causes a GC every time.
It does not do that when I first start Emacs, but it does
do an unreasonable amount of consing.

I did `emacs -Q', then defined the functions gc-set-base and
gc-info as shown in my other message.  Then I visited a directory
in which the following file was called out-35:

======================================================================
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15
From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
To: rms
Subject: Testing
bcc: rms-outgoing@gnu.org
Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
--text follows this line--
This is a test message so I can see how much consing Emacs does.
======================================================================

Just to make things more stable, I typed o for another file in the
directory first.  Then I moved to the line for out-35, and typed M-* o
M-* and got this output:

In Emacs 23

C=47815 S=6631(92347) V=276 SYM=8 MISC=2674 INT=1173
C=58843 S=9776(135489) V=285 SYM=9 MISC=2727 INT=1174

In Emacs 22.2

C=21999 S=2025(39136) V=118 SYM=2 MISC=3904 INT=654
C=23214 S=2729(51808) V=118 SYM=3 MISC=4121 INT=655

They are both unreasonably large, but Emacs 23 conses 40k
of strings, which is really amazing for a 215-character file.

When I get into the situation where each file I visit causes
a GC, I will measure that.



In GNU Emacs 23.0.60.6 (mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.11)
 of 2008-09-10 on lemote-menglan
configured using `configure  'CFLAGS=-O0 -g -Wno-pointer-sign' 'mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu' 'build_alias=mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu' 'target_alias=mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Mail

Minor modes in effect:
  gpm-mouse-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  global-auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  abbrev-mode: t

Recent input:
2 3 C-u C-n C-n I n SPC E m a c s SPC 2 2 . 2 RET RET 
C-x i f o o RET C-a C-u C-p C-p C-p C-p C-o C-o I SPC 
m a d e SPC a SPC C-a C-k I SPC h a v e SPC n o t i 
c e d SPC t h a t SPC s o e t i m e s C-u C-b C-b C-b 
m C-e SPC j u s t SPC t y p i n g SPC o SPC i n SPC 
D i r e d RET t o SPC v i s i t SPC a SPC f a i r l 
y SPC s m a l l SPC f i l e SPC c a u s e s SPC a SPC 
G C SPC e v e r y SPC t i m e . RET I t SPC d o e s 
SPC n t SPC d o ESC b C-b C-b o C-e t h a t C-u C-b 
SPC C-e SPC w h e n SPC I SPC f i r s t SPC s t a r 
t SPC E a c DEL DEL m a c s , SPC b u t SPC i t SPC 
d i e s RET DEL DEL DEL DEL o e d RET d o SPC C-p C-e 
DEL s C-n SPC DEL a n SPC u n r e a s o n a b l e SPC 
a m o u t SPC DEL DEL n t SPC o f SPC c o n s i n g 
, C-a C-p C-p C-p C-u C-u C-u C-k ESC x r e p o r t 
TAB RET

Recent messages:
Sending...
Wrote /home/rms/outgoing/out-34
Sending...done
Expunging deleted messages...done
Quit [2 times]
Sending...
Wrote /home/rms/outgoing/out-35
Sending...done
Mark set [3 times]
Auto-saving...done

bug#961: 23.0.60; Excess consing visiting files

[martin rudalics]

 > I have noticed that there are times when just typing o in Dired
 > to visit a fairly small file causes a GC every time.
 > It does not do that when I first start Emacs, but it does
 > do an unreasonable amount of consing.

It might be completely unrelated but did you look at Bug#122?  Len Trigg
reports that he had 200 open buffers "(about 170 of which are named like
*code-conversion-work*<nnn>)".

martin

bug#961: 23.0.60; Excess consing visiting files

[Richard M. Stallman]

    It might be completely unrelated but did you look at Bug#122?  Len Trigg
    reports that he had 200 open buffers "(about 170 of which are named like
    *code-conversion-work*<nnn>)".

I just saw that a few minutes ago.

Just now I have one buffer called ` *code-conversion-work*'
and one called ` *code-converting-work*'.  I think these names
are confusingly similar; they should be changed so that it is clear
why they are different and what each one is used for.

But there is only one of each.  This certainly does not explain why,
shortly after `emacs -Q', visiting that short file makes 40k of strings.

Next time it gets slow, I will investigate what hidden buffers I
have,