Almost OT: How can that be? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

14 Jan 1999

On or about 01:24 AM 1/15/99 -0500, R. Stricklin (kjaeros) was caught in a
dark alley speaking these words:

...
 On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Roger Merchberger wrote:

  Mind you, it's not a whopping lot faster, but
how it can be faster (by a
 few to five percent) is this: Larry Wall (who wrote Perl) optimized it in
 such a way that any ol' schmuck (like me) says "I could do this in C!!!"
 and does so, but not as efficiently as Larry did... therefore, code in Perl
 is faster than the reworked version in C. 
This isn't always true. 
'Tis why I said *can* be faster... not *is*. :-)

...
  When I wrote a de-artifacter for images captured
from a video source, I wrote it first in PERL to prove to myself the
algorithm I conceived would work; I used PERL because I am more familiar
with it than any other language.

Later, I ported the program to C which netted me a dramatic performance
increase: 15 minute processing times dropped to around a minute, while
CPU usage during the processing dropped from 100% to about 30%. 
Certainly... but what does "perl" stand for? 2 answers:
Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister...
or
Practical Extraction and Report Language

The strong points of perl are its strong array & list processing
capabilities and the file management commands. The former are where Perl
gets it's speed, and the latter, while prolly slower than C, are much
easier to code to do file manipulation.

Sure, if a proggie needed 20 lines of C versus 20 lines of perl, sure C's
gonna win. However, if your proggie relies heavily on perl's associative
arrays, it'll be tough to program in C, let along program *more
efficiently* in C...

...
 This isn't to disparage PERL at all. I like PERL.
There are some things
other languages are better suited for, though. 
Of course. Perl (for me) is best for that "quick & dirty" program. Get it
done, and fast, and move on. Tho I use it more often than C, C certainly
does have its advantages.

ObCC: IMNSHO, Basic09 has more...... Neener, Neener...   ;^>

Off to DreamyLand,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
=====
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- zmerch(a)30below.com
SysAdmin - Iceberg Computers
=====  Merch's Wild Wisdom of the Moment:  =====
for (1..15) { print "Merry Christmas\n"; }
(from perl.1 man page, version 4.)