🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ukvim4pceu.fsf@linda.teleport.com>,
Randal L. Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Hollebeek <tim@franck> writes:
>Tim> An important point, though, is that all 'reasonably' written C programs
>Tim> will run within a factor of 2 or so of 'about as fast as you can get,
>Tim> while for some problems, Perl won't be able to break through about a
>Tim> factor of 7 or so, even if you are a Perl expert.

>I just want to point out to everyone that you are simply making that
>figure up based on what you think Perl is doing internally.

>Tom Christiansen has had a long-standing bet that someone can't give
>him a program in C that he can't make run no more than "e" times
>slower (about 2.8 for you non-math-geeks) in Perl.  So far, no one's
>done it.

>That's also been my experience as well.  Perl is *not* slow.  In fact,
>a Perl-written egrep is *faster* than most vendor's egrep, for
>example.

But is it faster than GNU grep?  :)

>So, if you have a number of "7-times-slower" programs, post'em, and I
>bet we can easily boost their speed by two or three times.

HAH! I found Randall making a mistake...

He didn't say 7 times slower.  He said about 3.5 times slower, which is not
nearly as strong.  He gave perl a factor of 7, but C a factor of 2.

That sounds believeable.  For anyone other than you perl wizards, quite sane
even.  Although I think I know an example that I could use... Maybe I should
talk to Tom.  (And what do I get if I win?)

-s
-- 
Peter Seebach - seebs@solon.com - Copyright 1995 Peter Seebach.
C/Unix proto-wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help.  No, really!
Using trn?  Weird new newsgroup problem?  I know the fix!  Email me!
The *other* C FAQ - ftp taniemarie.solon.com /pub/c/afq - Not A Flying Toy