A couple of days ago I found out that gzread from the zlib library can be used for fast reading of binary files in Maple from the disk to memory - about 100 times faster than readbytes - something like in the following simplified example, 

A:=Array(1..2^26,99,datatype=integer[1]):

time(writebytes("A",A));close("A");

                                9.360

B:=Array(1..2^26,1,datatype=integer[1]):
time(readbytes("A",B));close("A");

                                8.065
B[1],B[-1];

                                99, 99

myreadbytes:=proc(f)
local gzopen, gzread, gzclose, n, p, A;
gzopen:=define_external('gzopen',
    'path'::string,
    'mode'::string,
    'RETURN'::integer[4],
    'LIB'="zlibwapi.dll");
gzread:=define_external('gzread',
    'file'::integer[4],
    'buf'::REF(ARRAY(datatype=integer[1])),    
    'len'::integer[4],
    'RETURN'::integer[4],
    'LIB'="zlibwapi.dll");
gzclose:=define_external('gzclose',
    'file'::integer[4],
    'RETURN'::integer[4],
    'LIB'="zlibwapi.dll");
n:=FileTools:-Size(f);
A:=Array(1..n,datatype=integer[1]);
try p:=gzopen(f,"rb");
if gzread(p,A,n)=n
then return A end if
finally gzclose(p)
end try
end proc:
time(assign(C=myreadbytes("A")));

                                0.062

C[1],C[-1];

                                99, 99

'time(myreadbytes("A"))'$5;

                  0.078, 0.062, 0.046, 0.046, 0.046

E:=Array(1..2^26,2,datatype=integer[1]):
time(ArrayTools:-Copy(A,E));

                                0.093

That needs some tweaking, because that works only on uncompressed files. If a file ("A" in this example) was gzipped, then the gzread would ungzip n (uncompressed) bytes in it in this example, instead of copying it into the memory - but it is not a big deal, in general.

Does anybody know about a similar replacement for writebytes? gzwrite doesn't work for copying (it compresses the array.)

I used the zlibwapi.dll library from http://www.winimage.com/zLibDll/index.html, it is a version of zlib 1.2.5 (written by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler) built by Gilles Vollant. The code is for a 32-bit system (Windows). That should work in 32-bit Linux after replacing that dll with standard libz.so.1, as well as on 64-bit systems after replacing integer[4] with integer[8] in most places.

Read and write English  is a strian!

Just a suggestion to make it easier to determine wether a question is still open or has been answered.

I have noticed there are many questions that have not been answered throughout mapleprimes history so here I am suggesting that a small yellow circle in front of the question denote an open question and a small green circle to represent answered questions.

Sometimes I come across unanswered questions, and it is still open but looks like it could be answered. ...

Under the Recent tab where you select Your Contributions.  It does not show all my posts.  Why is that?

Specifically, one example, my post on Wordle is not shown when I select My Contributions.  The only way I can see it is if I use All posts.  Please fix.

It's a new school year and traffic is up.  Just wondering what happened to the student maple forum?

Also as a suggestion, some forums have sticky's, a post that stays at the beginning of the forum where users can generally find welcome information and helpful starter hints, yes it's impossible to cover everything but something would be nice for the new users. 

Is there a way to get told only once that  "There are new updates on www.mapleprimes.com that match your notification subscriptions:" ?

I always receive 3 (when I do get any), and yes, they are identical.

3 times is better than 0 times, though.

Reputation plots seem to be broken at this time. There are just blank spaces, on pages where they'd normally appear.

I suggest that, if possible, the database or site-crawling used for Mapleprimes Searches not store pages ending in "/feed". It just adds to the chaff in search results.

I'd submit this as a Software Change Request, if there were a Mapleprimes checkbox on the form.

Many badges on this site will not get used for years if not decades, given the trends to date in site participation.

The suggestion has been made before. Why not rethink the criteria?

On a related note, I wonder how this Post became the first (and so far only) one to get over 1000 distinct views. (Was it imported into the "new V.2 of Mapleprimes from one of the separate and...

Why haven't MaplePrimes had the Internet icon? This small picture is the visiting card of a site. Maplesoft, Wolfram, and WolframAlpha have had the ones.

As sometimes the question comes up "how to have a pdf documents for this?" here is a free way to such on Windows:

PDFCreator

Essentially by that you install a printer, which just does it. And as such allows to print threads here from the board, or Maple sheets or simply from any application.

After some configuration hanky-panky it is easy to use.

When I see a listing of my own posts/questions, I would rather like to see a listing much like in the format shown here www.mapleprimes.com/recent/all  showing the postings less all the summaries. 

This would speed up my searching if I, or anyone else, was looking for a particular post of mine, or someone elses.

Though (currently) there have been 2 changes after hirnyk's reply (=21h ago, the others 18h and 14h)
the page for recent/all says: 21h old. Who ever wants to look in such, so discussions will die early.

What an incredible mess, that this still is not solved after month. It really spoils the rest of interest to
follow things here at the board, or even to contribute.

When replying to a reply, the text that is displayed is not the immediate reply, but rather the very first response.  This is rather annoying; I have to open a separate tab just to see what I am responding to.

Here, using the toolbar, I attempt to enter x-squared, using the superscript button: x. It shows up fine when I type this, but I don't see the raised 2 in the post.