Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!convex!news
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Slower in numerical calculation than awk?
Message-ID: <1991Feb04.131711.369@convex.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 13:17:11 GMT
References: <9102040846.AA17752@acf4.NYU.EDU>
Sender: news@convex.com (news access account)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 36
Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com

From the keyboard of lixj@acf4.NYU.EDU (Xiaojian Li):
:I write small awk and perl program, and to my dismay, awk is almost
:twice as fast as perl,

That depends.  See below.

:#!/bin/awk -f
:BEGIN { x = 1.0
:        for(i=0;i<100000;++i) x += i
:}
:END { print x }

:I notice that perl gives more accurate result. Is this higher precision
:which causes slowing down? In what precision perls does math?

Perl uses double precision math; old awk, at least, used single precision
math.  Here are my numbers (5-run averages) from a Convex C-220:

    awk:   7.4u 
    gawk:  7.5u
    nawk:  5.9u
    perl:  5.9u

So it would appear that it varies by architecture.  One anomaly in
my timings is that they all took negligle system time, except for
gawk, which consistently took 8.7 system time!!!

Maybe a Convex is just optimized for perl. :-)  [Or double precision
math, which would be easier to believe.]

--tom
--
"Still waiting to read alt.fan.dan-bernstein using DBWM, Dan's own AI
window manager, which argues with you 10 weeks before resizing your window." 
### And now for the question of the month:  How do you spell relief?   Answer:
U=brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu; echo "/From: $U/h:j" >>~/News/KILL; expire -f $U