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000004_icon-group-sender _Fri Jan 5 06:30:26 1996.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 08:34:14 MST
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 06:30:26 -0600 (CST)
From: "Chris D. Tenaglia" <cdt@post.its.mcw.edu>
To: rsjohnso@students.uiuc.edu
Cc: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Subject: Re: How does Icon compare to Perl?
In-Reply-To: <4cenpk$m0q@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.ULT.3.90.960105060653.28941A-100000@post.its.mcw.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Status: O
I've looked over Perl and it seems like what I'd expect from
an early cut at Icon (i.e. V1.0). Some icon concepts are there
though not as precise and consistent. It has regular expression
pattern matching which some deem extremely cool. Perl looks
more like a shell language and it blurrs very easily with the
OS, whereas Icon "looks" like a programming language.
I've done some limited benchmarks and from a few simple cases
that I could code equally in both, and on solaris. In that case
I think that it looks as though Perl used more time (30-50%). Perhaps the
Perl interpreter is larger than Icon and a fraction of a second
is not significant?
Perl is interpreted like old BASIC is interpreted. Each line has
to be freshly loaded and parsed during execution, whereas, even
an "interpreted" Icon program uses a pre-digested icode. Perl
programmers claim this is their plus, they can edit-run-edit-run
where Icon programmers have to edit-compile-run-edit-compile-run.
I think that compile step is a non-issue as icont compiles about
1000 lines per second on a sparc server 1000. Fairly insignificant.
The rest is the common sense and discipline of software engineering.
I think it's possible to write Perl code that looks like Icon and
maybe even to write Icon that looks like Perl (I don't why).
Chris Tenaglia (system manager) | cdt@post.its.mcw.edu
Medical College of Wisconsin |
8701 W. Watertown Plank Rd. | Ce que vous voyez est
Milwaukee, WI 53226 (414)456-8765 | ce que vous obtenez !
On 3 Jan 1996 rsjohnso@students.uiuc.edu wrote:
> Date: 3 Jan 1996 20:09:24 GMT
> From: rsjohnso@students.uiuc.edu
> To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
> Subject: How does Icon compare to Perl?
>
> Hi,I was wondering if anyone could tell me (that is, if anyone posts to
> this group) how Icon compares to Perl (on the Mac, that is) in terms of
> text handling capabilities and speed.
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> S. Johnson
>
>