gnulists@WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU (03/28/89)
wilensky@aaet.csc.ti.com writes: > I am using emacs on a Sun 386i. When I issue the lisp shell-command function > from an emacs lisp program, it usually takes 2 to 3 seconds before anything > happens. This, of course is annoying. Is there another way to issue a Unix > shell command that is faster or a better way to do this? This 2-3 seconds is probably the time necessary to set up a shell. Yes, it's very annoying, and fairly common in Unix. I've seen programs start up shells for the damdest reasons, rather than starting the desired process directly. In GNU Emacs, the trend continues. You can start a subprocess of emacs yourself much faster. Apropos "process" produces a list of pointers to all kind of neat functions and variables. Alternatively, you could hack shell-command to start one shell, and use it for successive shell commands. This is probably more in keeping with the ideology of shell-command. Regards, [Ag] gaynor@rutgers.edu