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I have a very file system intensive function that's being called many times a second. Wish to slow things down a little, anyone knows a way to throttle that function call in elisp?

[EDIT - 04/12/20]:

More info:

My Refreshing function calls projectile-project-p and it's half of my CPU use. As of profiler-report:


- tabbar-buffer-update-groups             156923  55%
 - let                                    156923  55%
  - sort                                  156923  55%
   - mapcar                               156922  55%
    - #<lambda 0xcae81b99>                156894  55%
     - save-current-buffer                156893  55%
      - list                              156756  55%
       - if                               156600  55%
        - funcall                         156600  55%
         - tabbar-buffer-groups           156599  55%
          - list                          156592  55%
           - if                           156592  55%
            - cond                        155466  54%
             - projectile-project-p       138487  48%
              - projectile-project-root   138481  48%
               - cl-some                  138347  48%

While Idle my implementation of the function tabbar-buffer-update-group is called multiple times a second (like using (message 'here'):

> here [210 times]
... 1s
> here [247 times]
... 2s 
> here [293 times]
... 3s

It gets higher when interacting with the interface (cursor moving, tab change, etc).

If i turn off my modifications in Tabbar everything gets so fast...

So: no bug in tabbar or emacs, I did it by myself.

Conslusions:

  1. projectile-project-p is too slow for a UI element to call this often. Or is it a bug in projectile?
  2. I totally should tinker with tabbar hooks and make it refresh only when file is saved of buffer changes. But code isn't that straightforward.
  3. I totataly should try to customize a more modern implementation, like Centaur Tabs, or I could stop being silly and just stop trying to reimplement perspectives into a tab bar implementation, dunno,
  4. Now thinking on throttling, it may not work as it does in javascript and I can have a flicker or lock in my UI, will I?
  5. The best aproach could be a cached return with a time to expire as now it looks a stalled version won't happen.
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4
  • The same comments made for emacs.stackexchange.com/q/57604/105 seem to apply here. – Drew Apr 12 '20 at 5:19
  • Please specify the behavior you want, as throttling. Are you looking just to slow down your function or to analyze a problem with it? If the former, maybe you can just use sleep-for (or sit-for). It's not very clear just what you're looking for. – Drew Apr 12 '20 at 5:25
  • @Drew It's an UI thing, won't sleep-for et al block the UI thread? I really don't know how parallel is elisp. – Henry Mazza Apr 12 '20 at 16:53
  • Elisp is not at all parallel. Yes, sleep-for blocks user input. – Drew Apr 12 '20 at 16:57
2

"Throttling" is probably not the right way to think about it.

There are likely two attack vectors:

  • change the caller of the function so it doesn't call you so often
  • change the function to make faster

the second can be done sometimes as follows:

(defun my-make-throttler ()
  (let ((last-time (float-time))
        (last-args 'dummy)
        (last-res ()))
    (lambda (&rest args)
      (if (and (< 1 (- (float-time) last-time))
               (equal args last-args))
          last-res
        (setq last-time (float-time))
        (setq last-args args)
        (setq last-res (apply args))))))
(advice-add 'THEFUNCTIONTOTHROTTLE (my-make-throttler))
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6
  • void-variable last-time and if I comment that goes to void-variable last-args ... – Henry Mazza Apr 12 '20 at 17:53
  • 1
    This code relies on lexical-binding being non-nil. IOW, add -*- lexical-binding:t -*- somewhere on the first line of the file in which you put that code. – Stefan Apr 12 '20 at 19:05
  • BTW, I changed the let to lexical-let and it looks like it went on. Still need debug. – Henry Mazza Apr 12 '20 at 20:34
  • 1
    lexical-let should die its honorable death. Do yourself a favor and add the -*- lexical-binding:t -*- at the head of the file. – Stefan Apr 12 '20 at 21:23
  • where it says last-res shouldn't say last-val? – Henry Mazza Apr 13 '20 at 0:16

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