woman: Cache
3.1.1 The WoMan Topic Cache
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The amount of information that WoMan caches (in main memory and,
optionally, saved to disc) is controlled by the user option
‘woman-cache-level’. There is a trade-off between the speed with which
WoMan can find a file and the size of the cache, and the default setting
gives a reasonable compromise.
The ‘woman’ command always performs a certain amount of caching in main
memory, but it can also write its cache to the filestore as a persistent
cache under control of the user option ‘woman-cache-filename’. If
persistent caching is turned on then WoMan re-loads its internal cache
from the cache file almost instantaneously, so that there is never any
perceptible start-up delay _except_ when WoMan rebuilds its cache.
Persistent caching is currently turned off by default. This is because
users with persistent caching turned on may overlook the need to force
WoMan to rebuild its cache the first time they run it after they have
installed new man files; with persistent caching turned off, WoMan
automatically rebuilds its cache every time it is run in a new Emacs
session.
A prefix argument always causes the ‘woman’ command (only) to rebuild
its topic cache, and to re-save it to ‘woman-cache-filename’ if this
variable has a non-‘nil’ value. This is necessary if the _names_ of any
of the directories or files in the paths specified by ‘woman-manpath’ or
‘woman-path’ change. If WoMan user options that affect the cache are
changed then WoMan will automatically update its cache file on disc (if
one is in use) the next time it is run in a new Emacs session.
Info Catalog
woman: Topic
woman: Word at point