[Ecls-list] ECL gaining Unicode support [CC from News]

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

Ok, we have reached a point where the unstable branch, built with
threads and Unicode, passes the ANSI tests with the same number of
errors as the bare build (no threads, no extended characters, just
default flags).

This does not mean much, but it shows that most of the problems
related to external formats, string i/o, extended characters and
readtables, etc, have been already solved.

There remains an important issue though: performance.  As you will see
below, the whole test suite takes 25% more time and 40% more space
with Unicode+threads than with the bare bones ECL. I am unsure whether
these numbers can be decreased significantly without breaking the ANSI
standard. Namely, some of the things that cons most are related to
string-input/output-streams which now have to build, by default,
extended strings, and these take 4 times more space than ordinary
ones.

Juanjo

39 out of 21696 total tests failed: COMMON-LISP-PACKAGE-NICKNAMES,
COMMON-LISP-USER-PACKAGE-NICKNAMES,
   BOUNDP.5, PROCLAIM.ERROR.7, CTYPECASE.15, CTYPECASE.16, EQUALP.5,
   EQUALP.6, DEFGENERIC.ERROR.20, DEFGENERIC.ERROR.21,
   CALL-NEXT-METHOD.ERROR.1, CALL-NEXT-METHOD.ERROR.2,
   DEFMETHOD.ERROR.14, DEFMETHOD.ERROR.15, MAKE-CONDITION.4,
   UPGRADED-ARRAY-ELEMENT-TYPE.8, BIGNUM.FLOAT.COMPARE.7,
   BIGNUM.FLOAT.COMPARE.8, EXP.ERROR.8, EXP.ERROR.9, EXP.ERROR.10,
   EXP.ERROR.11, EXPT.ERROR.8, EXPT.ERROR.9, EXPT.ERROR.10,
   EXPT.ERROR.11, MAP.ERROR.11,
   ALL-STANDARD-GENERIC-FUNCTIONS-ARE-INSTANCES-OF-THAT-CLASS,
   ENSURE-DIRECTORIES-EXIST.8, FORMAT.LOGICAL-BLOCK.23,
   SYNTAX.DOT-ERROR.1, COMPILE-FILE.2A, COMPILE-FILE.6, COMPILE-FILE.6A,
   COMPILE-FILE.8, COMPILE-FILE.14, COMPILE-FILE.16, COMPILE-FILE.18,
   MISC.521.
real time : 440.308 secs
run time  : 276.326 secs
gc count  : 139 times
consed    : 374849900 bytes

Default build

real time : 357.544 secs
run time  : 190.195 secs
gc count  : 139 times
consed    : 269502024 bytes



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Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
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