🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4e06en$a6v@solutions.solon.com>,
Peter Seebach <seebs@solutions.solon.com> wrote:
>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?)

If anyone gives Tom an example that he has trouble with, I'm sure we can 
push it through the compiler, even if it's not ready for release yet.
That should bring it down below the magic e factor.

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>
Oxford University Computing Services
"Widget. It's got a widget. A lovely widget. A widget it has got." --Jack Dee