As a very first datapoint, it would be nice to find out how one writes decent loops for a very simple task: sum the items of a list of 50,000 integers, running from 0 to 49,999. This is quite an important operation in MK, where cumulative offsets must often be calculated - it also gives an indication how efficient integer lists/ vectors are.
The C code is pretty obvious:
int sum = 0; for (i = 0; i < 50000; ++i) sum += data[i];
This one in tcl 8.4.6 runs at quite a bit under 1% of that speed:
set sum 0; foreach x $data { incr sum $x }My question is: how would you write the above in <insert your language of choice here> ?
This is not flame bait. I'm not trying to prove X is better than Y, I'm trying to find out what range of performances one sees these days, and how much I can get away with for now by *not* optimizing my new code to the limit (it also affects some major decisions on what internal data structures I should use at this stage).
I'm aware of the various "language shootout" websites, the risks of benchmarking, and cache effects. Still, self-contained examples of this logic would help me avoid seriously flawed timings in other languages when applied to tasks which are relevant to Metakit.
I'll summarize results.
-jcw
PS. All timing comparisons are being done using a PIII/650 on Linux. I've got the following installed so far if you're interested: python 2.3.4, perl 5.8.5, ruby 1.8.2, php 4.3.10, java 1.4.2, icon 9.40, gforth 0.6.2, lua 5.0.2 - can add more as needed.
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