reports problem

[Robert Graham Merkel]

linas@linas.org writes:
 > It's been rumoured that Robert Graham Merkel said:
 > > This is a known problem with the transaction report - it barfs on
 > > large reports.  Unfortunately,
 > > there is no easy fix, beyond rewriting the transaction report totally
 > > (which is happening for 2.0).
 > 
 > out of curiosity, what, exactly, is the problem?  Some O(n^2) loop?

Yes, something along those lines.  Our best guess is that there are
massive numbers of strings getting allocated and freed, overloading
the guile GC.  If you have a look at the code, it's written in an
extremely abstract functional programming style, so it's very
difficult to tell exactly what's causing the slowdown.

 > Does it come back eventually?

It seems to depend on the guile version.  1.4 copes a little better
than 1.3 or 1.3.4, which crash, causing a segfault.

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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

"We are excited and optimistic about its usage going 
forward and, yes, we can teach penguins the military 
close-order drill", Mark Norton, US Department of Defense. 
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