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From: lixj@acf4.NYU.EDU (Xiaojian Li)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Slower in numerical calculation than awk?
Message-ID: <2540004@acf4.NYU.EDU>
Date: 4 Feb 91 08:46:00 GMT
Organization: New York University
Lines: 26
To: rnews@cmcl2.NYU.EDU, rosenblg@acf4.NYU.EDU

I write small awk and perl program, and to my dismay, awk is almost
twice as fast as perl,

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

4.99995e+09
5.6u 0.0s 0:05 100% 0+280k 0+0io 0pf+0w

---perl---                            Both are run on SPARC 1
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
$X = 1.0;
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; ++$i) {
    $X += $i;
}
print $X, "\n";

4999950001
10.6u 0.1s 0:10 100% 0+428k 0+0io 0pf+0w

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