[Ficl-developers] Ficl vs C - Speed Comparison

[David M. <da...@re...>]

Hi all,

I just ran a speed comparison of ficl versus C.

The program used was a standard fibbonacci series.

: fib
   dup 3 < if
     drop 1
   else
     1- dup recurse swap 1- recurse +
   endif
;

In C, fib(42) took 10.25 secs to calculate on a T-bird 750.
In FICL, it took 547 seconds, a speed degradation factor of 53.

FICL is abundantly fast enough for user interface stuff and basic
scripting things, but for any substantial calculations or manipulation
of data, it has a performance issue.

Luckily, though, it's brainlessly easy and convenient to write FICL
words in C and do all the heavy crunching in C.

Cheers
David