I think it would be a better task for just the CLI
No, it wouldn't :). You can certainly do it, but it is frankly, easier with Emacs only.
arthurno1
joined 11 months ago
I can tell that I've noticed some improvements.
I guess you haven't run your Emacs for a long time, because ~100 megabytes of allocated memory will take its time to GC check. With that amount of RAM, you will probably notice Emacs "stuttering", like freezing for small periods of time when using it normally. The bigger the gc-cons-threshold value, the longer time it will take for GC to check the memory. Emacs does not have an incremental and multithreaded GC, so your Emacs will appear as frozen to you.
(defun salih/maybe-gc ()
(let ((original gc-cons-threshold))
(setq gc-cons-threshold 800000)
(setq gc-cons-threshold original
gc-timer (run-with-timer 2 nil #'salih/schedule-maybe-gc))))
Have you even looked at gc-cons-threshold value; after your idle timer has finished the work? Looking at your code, I believe you will be surprised because it does not seem to be what you think it will be.
What is the point of the first setq there?
In the third line, you are setting the value to hardcoded ~800 kb (I think it is the on 64-bit systems, but it is not so important), just to immediately override it with 100 meg as you defined it in the previous code piece (third line of your code), one after the gcmh. Secondly, what is the reason to use gcmh package if you are going to do it all manually :). GCMH will do exactly the same thing you are doing manually in that example if I am not mistaken; I don't use that package myself, but someone wrote it for the purpose of automating that little hack you are trying to make there. IMO, either use that package and be happy, or do it all manually.
What is the purpose of setq-ing gc-timer to run your function in that let-body (last line) which appears to just do exactly the same - you are again doing the same thing in your salih/schedule-maybe-gc. You are just telling Emacs in an infinite loop to set up a new timer when it is idle. If you believe you are telling Emacs to actually garbage collect something, you are wrong; you are just setting up another timer.
In other words; your code does not do what you believe it does; it is rather plain wrong, in other words, buggy, to put it mildly.
I can tell that I've noticed some improvements.
I can tell you haven't, you just don't know about it. When other posters here told you to benchmark they were correct.
we are not in an academic seminar, such anecdotal statements should be authentic enough.
We don't benchmark because of being academics, but because of ourselves. If we won't to improve something in whatever terms, cpu execution time, memory usage, number of resources allocated (timers, files, sockets etc.) you have to measure. You can't know for sure if you don't measure, there is no way. Your computer can be doing stuff, your application can be doing stuff, and so on. Modern computer systems are not deterministic in terms that hardware usage being exactly the same each time you run an application. Execution time is highly dependent on your OS and CPU scheduler(s), memory usage patterns and so on, some of the things your application usually does not influence explicitly.
Without measuring you are walking with a blindfold. However, you seem to have other problems than just benchmarking your stuff; you should really read the manual about stuff you are trying to improve or change, use built-in help; C-h f/v to see what stuff does and try to understand it. Read whichever blog posts you have found again and reflect carefully on what they say and why. Just blindly copying stuff without understanding it results in stuff like your code above.
Finally, to answer your original question, it all depends on how you wish to use your Emacs. What might be fast for one usage pattern, might not be fast for another one. Again, you will have to know what you are doing and to measure for your particular use-case.
when I use dired to follow a Windows shortcut it still opens it as a file
Have you enabled parsing of lnk files; as they say in the docs, you have:
(customize-option 'w32-symlinks-handle-shortcuts)
You can just
(setopt w32-symlinks-handle-shortcuts t)
However, when I tried it, they don't seem to parse correctly the name; the last part of the name is surrounded by '#' characters for some reason, so Emacs reports no such file found. I haven't looked in depth at how they parse stuff and where.
What is value of your find-file-visit-truename? Somewhere in your init file:
(setq find-file-visit-truename t)
and see if it helps.
I deleted my configuration, reinstalled emacs, and then followed the instructions again.
It is not Windows 98 you are configuring there. No need to reinstall Emacs. If you have messed up badly just remove your init file and restart Emacs.
But I struggle to achieve my learning of Elisp.
I think it is on your side. Sorry to tell it open, but Lisp(s) are very easy to learn and pick up. I don't know what you are teaching and what your expertize is in, but for me Lisp was as easy as VisualBasic.
The documentation is austere.
Emacs and Emacs Lisp are by fart the most documented Lisp applications. I can agree that it might be a bit outdated in terminology, and both terminology and API need some acclimatization since they predate the terminology we use today, and Lisp is a bit different from your ordinary Python/C/Java-like language. But I wouldn't say it is very hard; just different.
I found TODAY by CHANCE in this page
It has been in your Emacs all along, for a long time, since it is a part of Org manual that comes with your Emacs. You have to be more curious about what you are doing if you want to learn it and understand it. Nobody is going to throw knowledge at you; that happens only in classes. As a teacher, you should know that better than anyone else. If you want to learn and develop as Elisp programmer you will have to dig in yourself, be curious, search, read manual. Emacs Lisp is one of the most discoverable and documented Lisps and probably programming languages at all. You can C-h f to see docs directly in Emacs, and than just 's' in help window to see the source code. There are manuals for many parts of Emacs, including Org, that are built into your Emacs; you have debugging tools and lots of code to look at. You can also use Helpful which shows you the source code per default.
we don't have a smooth learning experience with Emacs
A learning experience is very subjective. It depends on many things. One of them is a person's ability as well as the will to learn.
Am I the only one to experience this ?
Probably not the only one, but also probably not the most representative example either. I am sorry. I am not trying to put you down as a person, but just suggesting that you should be more active, curious and looking for help yourself. As said, people can only provide you with manuals and material, but you have to look it up yourself, unless you can find an Emacs course. There are some online, perhaps that suits you better? Might be worth your time and small money investment. Perhaps look at some videos, or simply search for Elisp tutorials. There are some around.
Aha, ok. Thank you for the info, I'll take a look at them too then, sounds useful 😀
Is that just hyerspec?
You could alternatively install info version from an old Wiegley's thing called ready-lisp. Then you have it directly in Emacs, working as any other info manual.
Another option is to open the web version of files in eww. It is then still in Emacs, so you skip the web server and to switch between Emacs and web browser; if that is a feature for you.
I suppose that melpa downloads can be used as a measure of usage.
Not necessarily; lots of people would test some stuff and than perhaps not use it, or after some time go over to something else and so on. I wouldn't rely on download stats.
which extensions are used often in users setup
It would be certainly possible to monitor which files are required in your Emacs session, and you could setup a public server somewhere on the Internet where such stats are uploaded, putted together and published for viewing. But what would that matter to you what I or some other Joe are using? Learn a thing and build on it instead of switching and trying. As long as it solves your problems who cares what others are using?
What I tried is to feed to minibuffer word string.
So you have called:
M-: (type-of (read)) RET string RET?
You have just created a temporary symbol named "string". You can try this to see for yourself:
M-: (symbol-name (type-of (read))) RET
If you want a string object out of "string", you will have to quote it in the minibuffer too:
M-: (type-of (read)) RET "string" RET?
I think you should have not downvoted /u/lispm below (or whomever it was); he has given a few very good questions to get you going on in exploring those things on your own.
inside one file, I have difficulties going quickly up function by function
helm-occur
Just start typing and it will show you occurrences in a file; you can use C-n/C-p (or whatever you bind it to), and it will move the point in the buffer and show you the occurrence so you can see the surrounding text. If you C-g the point is left where you were, and if you just press enter your point will be placed at the occurence.
inside one file, I have difficulties going quickly up function by function
helm-occur
Just start typing and it will show you occurrences in a file; you can use C-n/C-p (or whatever you bind it to), and it will move the point in the buffer and show you the occurrence so you can see the surrounding text. If you C-g the point is left where you were, and if you just press enter your point will be placed at the occurence.
You don't need to move files around just to bulk rename them. If you want to do it, sure, you can, but you don't have to.
In your top level directory:
You will be in minibuffer now. Be sure dired listing switches have -l and -R option; -l is probably already there among anything else you might use; just type space and add -R at the end and type Return (Enter)
Now you will have a Dired buffer with al the subdirectories and files in them listed in the same buffer.
You are now in "writeable dired" mode where you can edit all file names as if it were an ordinary text buffer. You can also use replace-string for example to replace a part of the name in all filenames at once, regex-replace, etc. You can do it manually, or whatever else you would do in a text buffer.