Faster reading

[thi <ttn@mingle.glug.org>]

"merry::satchell"@hermes.dra.hmg.gb writes:

 > If I/O is an overhead when loading files, why not just slurp the whole
 > thing in one go by using read (the c read, not the scheme one). 
 > If the file is too big you can fall back on the current behaviour, 
 > likewise for pipes and other sources. For example, boot-9 is about 80K,
 > and we can easily afford that sort of amount of temporary buffer space.
 > 
 > So something like
 > 
 > static char*
 > quick_read(char *filename)
 > {
 >   [snipped -ttn]
 > } /* caller must free content*/
 > 
 > No error handling or anything, but I bet it would be fast!!

Along these lines, is anyone working on introducing an emacs-like buffer
type to Guile?  (I vaguely recall some discussion on this.)

Thanks,
thi