Re: poor make-pipe-stream performance

[haible (Bruno Haible)]

Marcus Daniels <marcus@ee.pdx.edu> compares CLISP pipes to AKCL pipes:

> 				Real-time 	`Run-time'
> CLISP Straight (local) file: 	37.6		35.1
> CLISP MKFIFO file:		258.3		151.04
> CLISP MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM	232.9		145.27
> AKCL Straight (local) file:	33.0		N/A
> AKCL RUN-PROCESS		58.0		N/A

CLISP buffers regular files, because I can assume that the contents of a
regular file won't change. When CLISP OPENs anything else (socket, fifo,
pipe to another program) I didn't dare to make these streams buffered
since reading too much or writing too late may have undesired effects
(e.g. if one end of such a stream is interactive, or require FINISH-OUTPUT
after every write operation, or even dead-locks).
Thus when you READ from a pipe, READ-CHAR calls the operating system's read()
function once for every character.
It's not fast, but it is safe.

You may use temporary files instead of pipes. Which to use depends on the
amount of data you wish to transport, and on the operating system of course.


                    Bruno Haible
                    haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de