In the postscript-mode the following regexp is used for highlighting strings. This either triggers a bug in the regexp matching or is grossly inefficient (I tend to believe the latter). ;; Proper rule for Postscript strings '("(\\([^)]\\|\\\\.\\|\\\\\n\\)*)" . font-lock-string-face) This shows up when trying to fontify tmac.ps which is part of the groff distribution (53 lines of ps-code). (This was pointed out by Ronald Florence in c.e.x) I have interrupted XEmacs a couple of minutes after evaluating from the start of the buffer (re-search-forward "(\\([^)]\\|\\\\.\\|\\\\\n\\)*)" 1436 t) The file contains a lot of '(' but no ')' at all. Isn't the above regexp equivalent to "(\\([^)]\\)*)" anyway? Gunnar -- Gunnar Evermann Natural Language Systems Group, University of Hamburg EMail: Gunnar.Evermann(a)nats.informatik.uni-hamburg.de