Brad Lucier wrote:
> My unstated (definitely understated) point is that predicate->bitset
> will never return in the general case, which isn't much different from
> how long it will take predicate->char-set to return on systems that use
> a four-byte character representation.

A simple benchmark suggests that, on current 64-bit hardware, with
a 32-bit character code and a simple predicate that few characters
satisfy, PREDICATE->CHAR-SET would return in about an hour...

...but it would run in constant time!

Will