Hrvoje> Hmm, yes. It bothers my esthetic soul to know that every time a Hrvoje> function is called its arglist is parsed in vain search of Hrvoje> `&optional', `&rest', and stuff. It somehow doesn't "feel right". Hrvoje> Obviously, the yearnings of my soul needn't have anything to with the Hrvoje> actual speed of the code. :-) Truly, my soul has also agonized over this question. The object-oriented way would be to have many different compiled-function object types, each of which has a different argument-parsing `method'. Hrvoje> How much of the rest of what this URL describes have you Hrvoje> implemented? The specbind() stuff in the source looks Hrvoje> pretty much like the stuff Ben says we should have. The Hrvoje> same goes for the massaged byte-code stuff, as well as for Hrvoje> inlined unbind_to(). Hrvoje> Looking at the code, I cannot believe that the specbind() optimization Hrvoje> is not implemented. Also, I cannot believe that unbind_to() Hrvoje> optimization is not implemented. Oh, yeah, I also implemented specbind() and unbind_to() optimization. Hrvoje> BTW, how do you obtain gprof output for a single benchmark? Hrvoje> Ugly ugly ugly... WIBN if gprof supported something like Hrvoje> gprof_start_recording() and gprof_stop_recording(), analogous to what Hrvoje> quantify has? Hrvoje> On Linux, where the source to gprof and libc are available, this might Hrvoje> even be implementable! Yay! binutils-2.9 contains some new information that might be of use here: A special startup routine allocates memory for the histogram and either calls `profil()' or sets up a clock signal handler. This routine (`monstartup') can be invoked in several ways. On Linux systems, a special profiling startup file `gcrt0.o', which invokes `monstartup' before `main', is used instead of the default `crt0.o'. Use of this special startup file is one of the effects of using `gcc ... -pg' to link. On SPARC systems, no special startup files are used. Rather, the `mcount' routine, when it is invoked for the first time (typically when `main' is called), calls `monstartup'. If the compiler's `-a' option was used, basic-block counting is also enabled. Each object file is then compiled with a static array of counts, initially zero. In the executable code, every time a new basic-block begins (i.e. when an `if' statement appears), an extra instruction is inserted to increment the corresponding count in the array. At compile time, a paired array was constructed that recorded the starting address of each basic-block. Taken together, the two arrays record the starting address of every basic-block, along with the number of times it was executed. The profiling library also includes a function (`mcleanup') which is typically registered using `atexit()' to be called as the program exits, and is responsible for writing the file `gmon.out'. Profiling is turned off, various headers are output, and the histogram is written, followed by the call-graph arcs and the basic-block counts.