🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't want to start a religeous war, and YES, I did read the FAQ's,
and did not find any info on relative speed of comparing C vs Perl vs Tcl
vs Java in a very general sort of fashion. (I know specific features of each
will vary...)

I'm very interested in the uses of Tcl and Perl, with regard to Tk and 
other GUI toolkits (what other's are there?) 

Can't seem to find any info on statements I have read that seem to conflict:

Somewhere I have read that Perl coded grep runs as fast or faster than C
coded grep in Unix. (Larry Wall wrote this, correct me if I'm wrong.)

And in a CGI-web book I read that Perl is an interpreted language that runs
10 times slower than C. But Perl is compiled, right? So how is that different
than say, the Tcl interpreter? Is this just semantics? I would say that
Perl is a run-time compiled language if I had to guess...

So what's the real answer, or are both statements true somehow? I know that
Perl can run faster or slower depending on how you code it, (C too) and 
so I guess you would have to find the fastest C code for a particular function
and similar fastest Perl code (or Tcl) and compare THOSE programs to get 
a definative answer.

And then, what about the speed of Java in comparison to the other 3?

Perl/Tcl/Java Newbie-