Perl, Python and Ruby

After reading this article comparing the new Ruby 1.9 to it’s older version and Python, I thought it would be interesting to see how my preferred language, Perl, compares. First, because my hardware is certainly different from the author of that post, I re-ran the Python and Ruby 1.9 tests:

Python:
real    0m43.415s
user    0m41.455s
sys     0m0.132s

Ruby:
real    0m35.379s
user    0m33.722s
sys     0m0.112s

I threw together some quick Perl:

sub fib {
    my $n = shift;

    if ( $n == 0 or $n == 1 ) {
        return $n;
    } else {
        return fib($n - 1) + fib($n - 2);
    }
}

for (0..35) {
    print "n=$_ => " . fib($_) . "\n";
}

and ran it:

Perl:
real    1m15.329s
user    1m9.188s
sys     0m0.364s

That’s impressive; Perl sucks at this recursive implementation of computing Fibonacci numbers. Since I had the makings of a little suite of benchmarks, I implemented this test in C and Java:

C code:

include 

int fib(int n) {
    if ( (n == 0) || (n == 1) )
        return n;
    else
        return (fib(n-1) + fib(n-2));
} //fib

int main() {
    int x;
    for (x = 0; x < 36; x++) {
        printf( "n = %d => %d\n", x, fib(x) );
    } //for
1
return 0;



}

C timing:

real    0m0.605s
user    0m0.564s
sys     0m0.000s

Java code:

class Fib {
    static int fib(int n) {
        if ( (n == 0) || (n == 1) )
            return n;
        else
            return (fib(n-1) + fib(n-2));
    } //fib

1
2
3
4
5
public static void main(String args[]) {
    for (int x = 0; x < 36; x++) {
        System.out.println( "n = " + x + " => " + fib(x) );
    } //for
} //main



} //Fib

Java timing:

real    0m0.455s
user    0m0.412s
sys     0m0.012s

It’s very interesting to see the huge speed disparities in these languages, but remember, this was a single, very limited test; don’t take these benchmarks as having any significant meaning. Really, don’t take them to mean much of anything, unless all you do is write lots of simple recursive code.