Is it not possible to read a file at once instead of using read-line
or read-char? The following is very slow for big files.
I'm working with GCL under Linux. Thanks.

(defmacro readfile (name)
`(with-open-file (file ,name :direction :input)
(do ((row (read-line file) (read-line file nil 'file-end))
(text "" (format nil "~a~a~%" text row)))
((eql row  'file-end) text))))

J. Eschgfaeller

| Is it not possible to read a file at once instead of using read-line
| or read-char?

  two ways: (1) use READ-SEQUENCE on a pre-allocated string (use
  FILE-LENGTH to learn how big it should be), or (2) make a FFI call to
  the mmap system call and treat it as a string.  the first is simple.

| I'm working with GCL under Linux. Thanks.

  there are much better Common Lisp implementations available under Linux.
  I would recommend Allegro CL from Franz Inc.  visit www.franz.com.

#:Erik

The code you uses uses an O(n^2) string copying, so it's not surprising
that it's slow.  

(There's also zero justification for this being a macro.  It will only
bloat your code and the savings in speed is negligible.  A function call
is probably set up in only a couple of instructions, and anything
that is doing this many calls to read-line, open, format, etc. is using
so many other instructions that the value of having this be a macro
rapidly approaches zero.)

Even without doing anything else, you could switch it to
an O(n) algorithm (where n is the number of lines) by doing:

 (defun read-file (filename)
   (with-open-file (stream filename :direction :input)
     (read-stream stream)))

 (defun read-stream (stream)
   (with-output-to-string (result-stream)
     (loop (multiple-value-bind (line eof-p)
               (read-line stream nil nil)
             (when line (write-string line result-stream))
             (when eof-p (return))
             (terpri result-stream)))))

However, if you need greater efficiency, you should consider using
READ-SEQUENCE instead of READ-LINE, so that you can buffer larger
blocks of text than single lines.

See CLHS for info on READ-SEQUENCE.
http://www.harlequin.com/education/books/HyperSpec/FrontMatter/index....