Oh, a good benchmark? ;-) OK, I'll admit I was being a bit flippant there. I'll agree with you if you add that the test must use real world data and real conditions as much as possible, but I just don't know how often that level of effort is made.

In this case Doug compares Perl to lots of other scripting languages - all on the same platform, and where possible, under the same conditions. The results are valid for seeing a lot more than how fast (in raw speed) something is.

I did read the page and know what he's comparing, but I still don't see what broader insights can be gained from these statistics. I'm not saying they are not interesting, but I sure wouldn't pick a language based on these results alone. Can you elaborate a bit on what you think the results show?

If you compare languages or platforms using the more traditional benchmarks which are often highly idealized and optimized little exercises that have little to do with a real world use, you'll be able to say which ones run the benchmark the fastest, but not which one is better for a particular application (unless you have thoroughly profiled that application and know the appropriate weights to insert in the scorecard page or equivalent).

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser