unexpected behaviour of `with-output-to-string'

Dear Bug Team! I recently have been working at a small program, which makes FreeBSD's "cdcontrol"-command accessible from within XEmacs, in order to add a small cdplayer to my local setup and learn more elisp. I heavily rely on that command-line tool and need to call it regularly via `shell-command-to-string'. Letting my program run over night, I found a pretty slow XEmacs the next morning, because lots of *string-output*-buffers had been opened. The problem seems to be in `with-output-to-string', which opens temporary buffers, but instead of removing them, just deletes the buffers' content. I locally defined a substitute for `with-output-to-string', replacing the last line of ,---- | (defmacro with-output-to-string (&rest forms) | "Collect output to `standard-output' while evaluating FORMS and return | it as a string." | ;; by "William G. Dubuque" <wgd(a)zurich.ai.mit.edu&gt; w/ mods from Stig | `(with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create | (generate-new-buffer-name " *string-output*")) | (setq buffer-read-only nil) | (buffer-disable-undo (current-buffer)) | (erase-buffer) | (let ((standard-output (current-buffer))) | ,＠forms) | (prog1 | (buffer-string) | (erase-buffer)))) `---- with (kill-buffer(current-buffer))))) and now everything works as expected for me. Is this something which should be changed in the XEmacs-distribution or did I just misunderstand the purpose and/or implementation of `with-output-to-string'? Alexander ================================================================ System Info to help track down your bug: --------------------------------------- uname -a: FreeBSD deepspace.reinwarth.com 4.5-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE #4: Wed May 15 01:01:51 CEST 2002 root＠deepspace.reinwarth.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/DEEPSPACE i386 ./configure '--site-includes=/usr/local/include/' '--site-libraries=/usr/local/lib' '--with-ldap' '--with-site-lisp=yes' '--with-mule' '--with-wmcommand=yes' '--with-xim=xlib' '--with-xfs' '--with-widgets' XEmacs 21.4.8 "Honest Recruiter" configured for `i386-unknown-freebsd4.5'. Compilation / Installation: Source code location: /usr/local/xemacs-21.4.8 Installation prefix: /usr/local Additional header files: /usr/local/include/ Additional libraries: /usr/local/lib Runtime library search path: /usr/local/lib:/usr/X11R6/lib:/usr/libexec Operating system description file: `s/freebsd.h' Machine description file: `m/intel386.h' Compiler: gcc -g -O3 -Wall -Wno-switch -Winline -Wmissing-prototypes -Wsign-compare -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith Relocating allocator for buffers: yes GNU version of malloc: yes Window System: Compiling in support for the X window system: - X Windows headers location: /usr/X11R6/include - X Windows libraries location: /usr/X11R6/lib - Handling WM_COMMAND properly. Compiling in support for the Athena widget set: - Athena headers location: X11/Xaw - Athena library to link: Xaw Using Lucid menubars. Using Lucid scrollbars. Using Athena dialog boxes. Using Athena native widgets. TTY: Compiling in support for ncurses. Images: Compiling in support for GIF images (builtin). Compiling in support for XPM images. Compiling in support for PNG images. Compiling in support for JPEG images. Compiling in support for TIFF images. Compiling in support for X-Face message headers. Sound: Compiling in support for sound (native). Databases: Compiling in support for Berkeley database. Compiling in support for GNU DBM. Compiling in support for LDAP. Internationalization: Compiling in support for Mule (multi-lingual Emacs). Compiling in support for XIM (X11R5+ I18N input method). - Using raw Xlib to provide XIM support. - Using XFontSet to provide bilingual menubar. Mail: Compiling in support for "flock" mail spool file locking method. Other Features: Inhibiting IPv6 canonicalization at startup. Compiling in support for dynamic shared object modules. Load-Path Lisp Shadows: ---------------------- (/usr/home/alex/.lisp/snake /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/games/snake /usr/home/alex/software/gnus/lisp/starttls /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/mail-lib/starttls /usr/home/alex/software/gnus/lisp/rfc2104 /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/mail-lib/rfc2104 /usr/home/alex/software/gnus/lisp/pop3 /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/mail-lib/pop3 /usr/home/alex/software/gnus/lisp/netrc /usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/mail-lib/netrc) Installed XEmacs Packages: ------------------------- ((zenirc:version 1.13 :type regular) (xslt-process :version 1.1 :type regular) (xslide :version 1.03 :type regular) (xemacs-devel :version 1.48 :type single-file) (xemacs-base :version 1.67 :type regular) (w3 :version 1.25 :type regular) (vm :version 7.07 :type regular) (viper :version 1.34 :type regular) (view-process :version 1.11 :type regular) (vhdl :version 1.15 :type regular) (vc :version 1.33 :type 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