The TEXT system was implemented in CMU lisp (an extension of Franz Lisp) on a VAX 11/780. The TEXT system source code occupies a total of 1176 K of memory with the following breakdown:

• Knowledge base and accessing functions (not including database and database interface functions): 442K

• Strategic component: 573K

• Tactical component: 145K

The system, including the knowledge base, was loaded in entirety into memory for use of the TEXT system. Only the database remains on disk. No space problems were encountered during implementation with one exception: the particular Lisp implementation available does not allow for resetting the size of the recursive name stack. This meant that certain functions which were originally written recursively had to be rewritten iteratively since the name stack was not large enough to handle them.

Processing speed is another question altogether. Currently the response time of the TEXT system is far from being acceptable for practical use. The bulk of the processing time, however, is used by the tactical component. Since it was not the focal point of this dissertation, no major effort was made to speed up this component. To answer a typical question posed to the TEXT system, the strategic component (including dictionary interface) uses 3290 CPU seconds, an elapsed time of approximately one and a half minutes, while the tactical component uses 43845 CPU seconds, an elapsed time of approximately 20 minutes. Times vary for different questions. These statistics were obtained when using the system in a shared environment. An improvement in speed could be achieved by using a dedicated system. It should be noted, furthermore, that the strategic component is not compiled, while the tactical component is.