Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!orstcs!tgd@tesla.CS.ORST.EDU
From: tgd@tesla.CS.ORST.EDU (Tom Dietterich)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why is (read) slow?
Message-ID: <20705@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Date: 2 Oct 90 19:23:23 GMT
References: <20644@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <1990Oct1.123907.24074@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: usenet@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Oregon State Univ.
Lines: 32

In article <1990Oct1.123907.24074@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
        michaelg@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Michael Greenwald) writes: 

>Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.  Perhaps you are comparing two ascii
>files whose only difference is that the latter one has forms like 
>  (SETQ A '( ... s-expressions ...))
>instead of plain s-expressions?
>
>If so, then both have to be (READ), so it would be hard for someone to
>explain why LOAD is so much faster than READ without knowing more
>details about the particular files you are talking about.
>

Yes, you are misunderstanding me.  I am comparing calling READ on a
file containing a big s-expression versus calling LOAD on a nearly
identical file of the form

  (setq foo s-expression)

It doesn't matter much what is in the s-expression, in my experience.

>>Thomas G. Dietterich
>>Department of Computer Science
>>Dearborn Hall, 303
>>Oregon State University


-- 
Thomas G. Dietterich
Department of Computer Science
Dearborn Hall, 303
Oregon State University