Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!apple!voder!nsc!taux01!amos
From: amos@taux01.nsc.com (Amos Shapir)
Newsgroups: comp.benchmarks
Subject: Don't use bc (was: More issues of benchmarking)
Message-ID: <5042@taux01.nsc.com>
Date: 1 Dec 90 21:20:17 GMT
References: <122@thinc.UUCP>
Organization: National Semiconductor (IC) Ltd, Israel, Home of the Series 32000
Lines: 26
X-Hdate: 15 Kislev 5751

[Quoted from the referenced article by ethan@thinc.UUCP (Ethan Lish of THINC)]
>
>Greetings -
>
>	This _benchmark_ does *NOT* have a legitimate value!
>

Sure it doesn't; I wonder how no one else noted this yet: "bc" is probably
the worst choice of a utility to benchmark by.  On most UNIX systems, it
just parses expressions, and forks "dc" to execute them ("dc" is a reverse-
polish string based numeric interpreter).  So the results depend on how
fast your system forks, and how "bc" and "dc" communicate.

Besides, there are several versions of "bc" (some of which do not fork "dc")
and since the original version of "dc" was rather buggy, several versions
of it too, some of which are major rewrites.

The bottom line is: comparing "bc" runs on different systems is necessarily
comparing apples and oranges (or at least plums & prunes) unless you're
sure you have the same version of "bc", "dc", and UNIX.  Results posted
here so far indicate most comparisons are indeed meaningless.

-- 
	Amos Shapir		amos@taux01.nsc.com, amos@nsc.nsc.com
National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel
Tel. +972 52 522255  TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 GEO: 34 48 E / 32 10 N


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