Marc:

If you're in the mood for adding specializations to the compiler, please consider the approach to read-char and write-char in

<https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/2007-February/ 001135.html>

<https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/2007-February/ 001130.html>

and especially

<https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/2007-February/ 001140.html>

I think character-based IO will probably end up being just about as fast as in C with this approach.

Brad