This plugin is too slow in nvim

[Hello-LuisWu]

This plugin is too slow in nvim, I hope you can re-develop it with lua

[dhruvasagar]

@Hello-LuisWu Can you share some examples ? I use nvim myself and haven't really seen any sluggishness.

[kaddkaka]

@Hello-LuisWu what's the reason it's slow in nvim instead of vim? Please keep the plugin compatible with both vim and nvim, it looks amazing :)

[bmvi-kinver]

I'm experiencing major slowdowns myself for large tables (200 characters wide, 80 characters tall). I just started using the plugin though, so maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[dhruvasagar]

@bmvi-kinver Can you tell me what feels slow ? Is it formulas ? Is it navigation ? Is it the auto-alignment (most likely candidate) ?

[dhruvasagar]

@bmvi-kinver Also, could you disable the table syntax by setting let g:table_mode_syntax = 0 and see if that makes a difference.

[bmvi-kinver]

@dhruvasagar it's slow in insert mode for the aforementioned table, just typing. I don't use formulas. Thanks for the suggestion! I set vim.g.table_mode_syntax = 0 in my init.lua file, and it's much faster now. Awesome plugin, by the way!

[OlivierBBB]

I'm experiencing slowdowns, too. I too am using neovim.

An example table that I'm working with has rougly 70 rows, 16 columns and is 317 characters wide. It contains some special characters (unicode squares https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+25A1).

Most navigation commands I am using here (h,j,k,l, <C-u>, <C-d>, <C-e>, and <C-y>) are very slow. The aforementioned commands, especially when pressed several times in a row or remaining pressed, cause lag and multisecond slowdowns in TableMode.

As a consequence I have to disable TableMode when navigating large tables. When I do the slowdowns disappear fully.

BTW: the vim.g.table_mode_syntax = 0 solution fully resolves the issue for me. I too love the plugin 🙂

[dhruvasagar]

I have started work on a lua port, my experience so far with performance is that lua outperforms vimscript by quite a margin. This should help but is a fairly huge undertaking so it will take a bit to be usable. Will share updates here.

[mb720]

I noticed in Neovim 0.9.5 on Arch Linux that a table becomes slow to navigate (j, k, h, l) if there is some text highlighted after a search (/) and the table mode is active.

When I remove the highlight, or disable table mode, performance returns back to normal.

[dhruvasagar]

@mb720 Like pointed out above, the issue is with the table syntax. Disabling table syntax as stated above should fix the slowness.

[engeljh]

Vim9script should also be faster...

[JamiroFerrara]

Hey @dhruvasagar great plugin, really enjoy it. Only issue is that yes the plugin is slow especially using formulas.
A single table update using formulas takes about 10 seconds doing simple arithmetic.
I would assume the reason is vimscript, altough it does seem odd that it takes that long.

In any case if there's any ideas on how to make it faster would be nice since i really havent seen many alternatives out there.

Cheers!

[JamiroFerrara]

If you need anything let me know @dhruvasagar

[dhruvasagar]

@JamiroFerrara I have tested with fair number & complex formulas. In my experience the slowness really has been because of the syntax, if you disable that it should be good. Kindly let me know.

[anjiro]

Using :syntime, I found the issue to be with the highlighting in these lines:

vim-table-mode/autoload/tablemode.vim

Lines 85 to 108 in e156dbb

	syntax match redCell '|\@<= *r:[^|]*' contained
	hi redCell ctermfg=9 ctermbg=1
	syntax match greenCell '|\@<= *g:[^|]*' contained
	hi greenCell ctermfg=10 ctermbg=2
	syntax match yellowCell '|\@<= *y:[^|]*' contained
	hi yellowCell ctermfg=11 ctermbg=3
	syntax match blueCell '|\@<= *b:[^|]*' contained
	hi blueCell ctermfg=12 ctermbg=4
	syntax match whiteCell '|\@<= *w:[^|]*' contained
	hi whiteCell ctermfg=0 ctermbg=15
	syntax match darkCell '|\@<= *d:[^|]*' contained
	hi darkCell ctermfg=15 ctermbg=0
	if exists("g:table_mode_color_cells") && g:table_mode_color_cells
	syntax match yesCell '|\@<= *yes[^|]*' contained
	syntax match noCell '|\@<= *no\A[^|]*' contained " \A to exclude words like notes
	syntax match maybeCell '|\@<= *?[^|]*' contained
	" '|\@<=' : Match previous characters, excluding them from the group
	endif

I'd guess it's due to using \@<= in the regex, since that's noted as being slow in the docs. Changing all of the \@<= to \zs speeds it up quite a lot.