GNU Info

(woman)Cache

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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.