Fast I/O ?

[Ranson <ranson@LANNION.cnet.fr>]

Is there a way to do fast file I/O of Lisp data? I know about STREAM-READER/
STREAM-WRITER, but since I have to output the data to a string before using
STREAM-WRITER, the result is actually slower than direct printing to the file.

As a test, I have generated a large list, with one level of sublists, contain-
ing symbols and integers. The generated file is just above 1 Mb. Using PRIN1,
I write to the file in about 140 seconds. Using PRIN1-TO-STRING then the
STREAM-WRITER method takes about 180 seconds. Compare this to the Finder, that
duplicates the file in less that 10 seconds.

So what is the solution?

     Daniel Ranson (ranson@lannion.cnet.fr)