Re: Explain syntax-ppss-stats please

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I do not understand the use of syntax-ppss-stats at all. Where is it used?
> > (I can only see that the 5:th element is read.) How does it work?
>
> Only the 5th element is really used.  The rest was added there during
> development to tune the algorithm.  It could be removed.

Thanks. I still believe too much in magic. I thought something strange 
was going on somewhere behind the scenes.

Maybe this could be told in the code and the lines changing the other 
elements commented out?


> As for the 5th element it's used to keep track of the average size of
> a "defun", so as to know whether to use the closest cache location, or
> to try and find a closer location with syntax-begin-function: if the
> closest cache location is 100KB earlier and syntax-begin-function
> usually finds a safe point within 10KB, we're better off calling
> syntax-begin-function (when tho it'll typically take a while itself)
> than running parse-partial-sexp on the 100KB.  But OTOH if
> syntax-begin-function usually needs to look back 200KB to find a safe
> spot, then just the call to syntax-begin-function might take us longer
> than just running parse-partial-sexp on the 100KB.

Thanks, this was helpful.