Re[2]: [Ficl-developers] Ficl vs C - Speed Comparison

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

Hi Billy,

BT> You give the ficl code -- what was the C code?  What was the C compiler?
BT> Just curiosity.

I didn't include the C code because I though people would assume it's
something like the code below. Compiler was gcc over Cygwin. Also, the
FICL code was run on Windows native FICL.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int fib(int n);
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
   int n;
   if (argc != 2)
       exit(1);
   n = atoi(argv[1]);
   printf("fib(%d) = %d\n", n, fib(n));
}

int fib(int n)
{
   if (n < 3)
      return 1;
   else
      return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);
}

>>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.

BT> A bad difference, but not out of my expectations.  ficl is not only
BT> insulated from the machine, it's also not optimized at all.  A little
BT> peephole optimization could probably double performance -- but it's doubtful
BT> that it'd be worth the effort.

>>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.

BT> And this is why.  Most FICL apps almost certainly do just this, and making
BT> ficl's compiler smarter would also make it bigger.  For ficl's main
BT> purposes, small is best.  For my app, I'm choosing ficl over lua entirely
BT> for a tiny size advantage.

Yes - FICL allows a lot of functionality to be packed into a small
size. Important, given that I've just recently ported FICL to a PDA
running Windows CE 2.11, and added wrappers for the FLTK GUI library,
therefore allowing the FICL code to generate and run GUIs on linux,
windows and windows CE .

-- 
Regards,
 David     mailto:da...@re...

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