Re: Just starting out.. newbie help :)

Paris Sinclair wrote:
> Perl is only slow when you use algorithms that were intended for PROLOG,
> LISP, C/C++ or Java.

No, that is fundamentally mistaken.

Algorithms are not "intended" for specific languages.
At least, not the kinds of algorithms we're concerned
with, like rule rewring, semantic net matching, etc.
Sure, these will be inherently faster to implement
in some languages, but it is false to conclude that
the algorithms were "intended" for these languages.

The plain, simple, and unfortunate fact is that Perl
is slow for almost anything you would want to do.
The one part of Perl that is almost always faster
than equivalent functionality in other languages is
the regular expression engine. Unless you can 
implement your critical algorithmic pieces on the
perl regex engine, you're going to be slow.


> for example
> the Schwartzian Transform is faster than standard C algorithms for the
> same task, because it creates less temporary variables... 

Let's see your benchmarks. I don't believe you have any.


-- 
John Porter