The on-going Arecibo Pulsar-ALFA (PALFA) survey began in 2004 and is searching for radio pulsars in the Galactic plane at 1.4GHz. Here we present a comprehensive description of one of its main data reduction pipelines that is based on the PRESTO software and includes new interference-excision algorithms and candidate selection heuristics. This pipeline has been used to discover 40 pulsars, bringing the survey's discovery total to 144 pulsars. Of the new discoveries, eight are millisecond pulsars (MSPs; P~100ms that gradually becomes up to ~10 times worse for P>4s at DM<150pc/cm^3^. We estimate 33+/-3% of the slower pulsars are missed, largely due to red noise. A population synthesis analysis using the sensitivity limits we measured suggests the PALFA survey should have found 224+/-16 un-recycled pulsars in the data set analyzed, in agreement with the 241 actually detected. The reduced sensitivity could have implications on estimates of the number of long-period pulsars in the Galaxy.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/812/81/table5 (*Pulsars discovered in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipeline)

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/812/81/table6 (Known pulsars re-detected in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipeline)