bug#12033: format should be faster

[nalaginrut]

On Sun, 2012-08-19 at 00:19 +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: 
> Hi!
> 
> nalaginrut <address@hidden> skribis:
> 
> > Our "format" is rather slow,
> 
> What makes you say so?
> 
> Did you make sure that the output port you’re writing to is buffered
> (this is not the case by default!)?  See ‘setvbuf’.
> 

OK, yes, I assumed the port will be buffered in default.
Should I set stdin/stdout(current-input-port/current-output-port) as
buffered each time?
But in my case, there's only current-output-port. And I set it as
buffered, the result is the same.

> > can we make it faster?  I can only output strings with display if I
> > need an faster program, which is not so elegant.
> 
> Until (ice-9 format) is loaded, ‘format’ is an alias for
> ‘simple-format’, which is implemented in C, less capable but faster than
> (ice-9 format).  Perhaps that’s usable for your use case?
> 


But I never use (ice-9 format).
There's ~15s difference between "display" and "format" in my laptop.
---------------code-1------------------
(define (main . args)
  (let* ((ll ((@ (srfi srfi-1) iota) (read) 1)) (len (length ll)) (m (1-
(/ len 2))))
    (display len)(newline)
    (let lp((a (list-head ll (1+ m))) (b (list-tail ll (1+ m))) (n 1))
      (and (< n len) 
   (for-each (lambda (x y) (display x)(display " ")(display y)(display "
")) a b)(newline)
   (lp (append (list 1 (car b)) (cdr a)) (append (cdr b) (list (list-ref
a m))) (1+ n))))))
-----------------end-------------------

--------------code-2-------------------
(define (main . args)
  (let* ((ll ((@ (srfi srfi-1) iota) (read) 1)) (len (length ll)) (m (1-
(/ len 2))))
    (display len)(newline)
    (let lp((a (list-head ll (1+ m))) (b (list-tail ll (1+ m))) (n 1))
      (and (< n len) 
   (for-each (lambda (x y) (format #t "~a ~a~%"  x y)) a b)
   (lp (append (list 1 (car b)) (cdr a)) (append (cdr b) (list (list-ref
a m))) (1+ n))))))
---------------end---------------------

time { echo 6000 | ./test 1>/dev/null ;} 

Code-1 is 0m30.326s
Code-2 is 0m45.310s

PS: Please use 6000 at least, or it's size is not representative.

> Thanks,
> Ludo’.