Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!thorin!evergreen!bts
From: bts@evergreen.cs.unc.edu (Bruce Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Comparing Prolog with other languages
Summary: Trying to encourage discussion...
Keywords: performance, what is symbolic?
Message-ID: <6967@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 89 16:34:36 GMT
References: <28091@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: bts@evergreen.UUCP (Bruce Smith)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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In <28091@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Peter Van Roy (vanroy@bellatrix.berkeley.edu)
raises a good question about Prolog performance.  I have tried-- as I suspect
many have-- comparisions of Quintus (or any other favorite) Prolog vs. C, but
the programs are either trivial or I do not have the patience to write both.
(Quintus was almost always within an order of magnitude, but always slower.)

Peter Reintjes (usually pbr@mcnc, but temporarily off the net) wrote VLSI CAD
tools in Prolog-- based in part on earlier tools written in C-- but he mainly
emphasized software engineering aspects, not performance. (See, for instance,
"A VLSI Design Environment in Prolog", in LP'88.)

I'd like to hear from anyone who's done more comprehensive comparisions.  And,
does anyone have a strong intuition on when the Prolog programs will run near
the C programs in speed?  It's tempting to say on "symbolic" problems, but is
a theorem prover (even a propositional one) not symbolic?

	Bruce T. Smith