"Kirill 'Big K' Katsnelson" <kkm(a)dtmx.com&gt; writes: I understand that code -- the plain `message' had the same problem, and I fixed it, with phone help from Ben. Basically the problem is that `error' repeatedly updates the echo area, which has at least two bad consequences. The code in question is in print_error_message(), the "Default method" part, the `while (!NILP (tail)) { ... }' part. The two bad consequences are: * print_internal() is called with STREAM, which is in this case the echo area. The echo area is updated immediately due to its nature. It would be nice if that code could somehow delay the echo area update. * The garbage collections you see are due to `append-message' (called by echo_area_append()) trying to keep the top of the message-stack in sync with the contents of the "*Echo Area*" buffer. So what happens is that these strings are created in succession: "t" "t: " "t: t" "t: t, " "t: t, t" ... When this happens many times with each string longer than the last one, it turns into a GC frenzy. This is all explained in my comment in print_prepare(). The fix that addresses both problem is to avoid direct printing to minibuffer altogether: instead, the code prints into a temporary resizing buffer stream. When the printing is done, the stream contents are dumped into minibuffer. This is how all high-level printing functions work -- except for Fdisplay_error. Given that the infrastructure (kludge) for doing this already exists in print_prepare(), the only fix needed is for print_error_message() to call print_prepare(). For me, this patch fixes the problem -- the printing is fast with 1000-element, 10000-element, etc. lists. Please let me know if it works for you. 2000-01-14 Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)iskon.hr&gt; * print.c (print_error_message): Call print_prepare(). --- src/print.c.orig Fri Jan 14 09:27:59 2000 +++ src/print.c Fri Jan 14 09:38:38 2000 ＠＠ -627,8 +627,13 ＠＠ { int first = 1; int speccount = specpdl_depth (); + Lisp_Object frame = Qnil; + struct gcpro gcpro1; + GCPRO1 (stream); specbind (Qprint_message_label, Qerror); + stream = print_prepare (stream, &frame); + tail = Fcdr (error_object); if (EQ (type, Qerror)) { ＠＠ -650,6 +655,8 ＠＠ tail = Fcdr (tail); first = 0; } + print_finish (stream, frame); + UNGCPRO; unbind_to (speccount, Qnil); return; /* not reached */