From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2003-02-28T04:40:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Optimization (was: Re: Ruby Compile-time ...)

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 04:17:26AM +0900, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Alright, it seems that things like contant folding would not be so 
> significant after all.  So when and why is Perl faster than Ruby?
> 
> >From what I've gathered so far:
> 
> * Ruby has faster OO.
> * Perl uses Bob Jenkins' hashing algorithm which is supposedly faster.
> * Perl has optimized REs.
> 
> Are these last two things the main things that Perl is faster at?

I believe the overall picture is best described by saying that in Perl
some things are resolved much earlier (even as early as statically...).

> We can implement the better hashing algorithm in Ruby.  Would it be hard 
> to use Perl's source to speed Ruby's RE's?

matz didn't use Perl's RE engine because it is strongly tied to other
things and taking it would mean adopting a sizable amount of Perl's
runtime system (I think matz stated that in the LL2 talk).

Plus it seems Perl's REs have been hand-crafted in such a way that the
mere inspection of the source code would drive any developer to madness.
We certainly don't want to lose matz or any of the core language-hackers
:)


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