Re^3: Perl vs C

You will (almost) never realize the execution speed of C in perl....

That depends on what you're doing. If you want to compare the languages themselves (okay, you can use C's standard library), I can suggest several algorithms and data structures and tasks which will be as fast in Perl as in C.

... which is why people do not write (eg) 3D API bindings for perl.

A far larger problem is data marshalling instead of opcode dispatch.

What is the acronym for again, anyway?

Perl is not an acronym.

Comment on Re^3: Perl vs C

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^4: Perl vs C by assemble (Friar) on Mar 16, 2009 at 13:03 UTC
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.	[reply]
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]