slow startup of zsh (1x slower than bash)

[Peng Yu <pengyu.ut@gmail.com>]

Hi,

The following example shows that zsh startup time is much slower than
other shells. Can this be improved to at least as fast as bash?

==> main.sh <==
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# vim: set noexpandtab tabstop=2:

set -v
TIMEFORMAT=%R
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    :
done
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.sh
done
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.dash
done
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.bash
done
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.ksh
done
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.zsh
done
==> script.bash <==
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
==> script.dash <==
#!/usr/local/bin/dash
==> script.ksh <==
#!/usr/local/bin/ksh
==> script.sh <==
#!/bin/sh
==> script.zsh <==
#!/usr/local/bin/zsh
$ ./main.sh
TIMEFORMAT=%R
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    :
done
0.001
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.sh
done
0.339
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.dash
done
0.387
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.bash
done
0.486
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.ksh
done
0.538
time for ((i=0;i<100;++i))
do
    ./script.zsh
done
0.953

-- 
Regards,
Peng