Subject: bug#496: 23.0.60; ispell-word becomes increasingly slower

From: Markus Triska <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:25:48 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

>> check for memory leaks in aspell, I did:
>> 
>>    $ while true; do echo "test"; done | aspell -a
>> 
>> and in this case, aspell's memory usage seems to stay constant.
>
> Garbage collection?

I've received a better test case from the Aspell maintainer: 

  ( while true; do echo '!'; echo "-"; echo "%"; echo "^test"; done ) | aspell -a

According to him, it is the constant switching of modes that is causing
a problem. He notes:

   "I have narrowed down the problem code. Technically it is not a leak
   as the code is still reachable (according to valgrind), which makes
   it harder to fix. I will let you know."

It is thus more an Aspell problem, but if it cannot be fixed in Aspell,
I will look whether the Emacs side of communication can be improved.