Re^4: Perl vs C

I can suggest several algorithms and data structures and tasks which will be as fast in Perl as in C.

I keep seeing people say this, but I've never managed to see it happen. Usually Perl is fast enough, but I've never managed to outperform the equivalent C program. Could you please provide some examples of what is faster in Perl than C, because I really am interested.

Comment on Re^4: Perl vs C

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Re^5: Perl vs C by chromatic (Archbishop) on Mar 16, 2009 at 18:08 UTC
Many of these algorithms are for arbitrary string searching; it's difficult to outperform Perl's regex engine. (Please note that the portion of my post which you did not quite implied that you can't pull in PCRE.) I suspect, but can't immediately prove, that code heavy with `malloc`/`free` temporary data may reach a point where it's faster in Perl than in C, but that depends on overcoming the overhead of op dispatch in Perl.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^6: Perl vs C by assemble (Friar) on Mar 17, 2009 at 13:21 UTC
Thanks. Most of my work is binary data crunching, and that's not exactly Perl's strongest suit. Perhaps if I was doing a large amount of work with text processing I would have noticed the performance increase.	[reply]