The Great Win32 Computer Language Shootout

Back to the Win32 Shootout Back to dada's perl lab

The Benchmark Tests Ackermann's Function Array Access Count Lines/Words/Chars Echo Client/Server Exception Mechanisms Fibonacci Numbers Hash (Associative Array) Access Hashes, Part II Heapsort Hello World List Operations Matrix Multiplication Method Calls Nested Loops Object Instantiation Producer/Consumer Threads Random Number Generator Regular Expression Matching Reverse a File Sieve of Erathostenes Spell Checker Statistical Moments String Concatenation Sum a Column of Integers Word Frequency Count (Not all languages are tested in every benchmark)

A benchmark comparison of a number of programming languages. Note: I'M NOT THE AUTHOR OF THE SHOOTOUT! this is a port of the work done by Doug Bagley on the Win32 platform. I've added some Win32-specific languages (for which Doug is not to blame :-), but most of the material is copyright © Doug Bagley. The original shootout can be found here. Intro As stated in the note above, this is a port of the Great Computer Language Shootout by Doug Bagley on the Win32 platform. Doug made a hell of a good job with this test suite on its Linux box. Since most of the programming languages are implemented on Win32 without many differences, I started taking his source code and let it run on my Win32 box. Please note that all the disclaimers, warnings, and notes by Doug apply to this shootout as well. This is ncluding, but not limited to: ...some solutions as currently presented are unoptimized... ...please take the current results with a grain of salt... ...you might even find that I have horrible bugs in my testing method... I'm doing it so that I can learn about new languages, compare them in various (possibly meaningless) ways, and most importantly, have some fun. And, above all: "There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks". I should also add another very important disclaimer: this is by all means not not be intended as a comparison between Linux and Windows! The test platforms (both hardware and software configuration) are completely different, so the results from Doug's benchmarks can't be absolutely compared to mine. Please don't use this stuff to fuel your holy wars (eg. Windows suckz, Linux rulez, ...). That said, the most important differences between the original shootout and this one are: I've added some Win32-specific languages: Visual C++ VBScript C# I've also added some languages not implemented by Doug: Rexx Pascal (Free Pascal, Virtual Pascal, Delphi) Awka Pliant Mozart-Oz Modula-3 elastiC Parrot The benchmark results are somewhat more reliable (especially memory usage): I've used some Win32 API tricks to determine the process start time, end time and peak memory usage AFTER the process has finished, so we have data even for very quick processes.

The Languages Language Imple- mentation (local summary) Version (Official Homepage) 1. Ada gnat GNAT 3.15p (20020523) Copyright 1996-2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 2. Awk gawk GNU Awk 3.1.3 3. Awk awka awka 0.7.5, 12 July 2001 4. Awk mawk mawk 1.3.3 Nov 1996, Copyright (C) Michael D. Brennan 5. C mingw32 2.95.3-6 6. C gcc gcc (GCC) 3.3.1 (cygming special) Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. (Cygwin Version 1.5.5(0.94/3/2)) 7. C lcc Logiciels/Informatique lcc-win32 version 3.8 compilation date: Jun 3 2002 11:11:13 8. C vc Visual Studio 6.0 (Compiler Version 12.00.8168) 9. C bcc Borland C++ 5.5.1 for Win32 10. C# csharp Microsoft (R) Visual C# .NET Compiler version 7.00.9466 11. C++ vc++ Visual Studio 6.0 (Compiler Version 12.00.8168) 12. Common Lisp poplisp Version 15.53 06/04/2001 18:46:40 13. D d Digital Mars D Compiler ALPHA v0.42 14. Delphi delphi dcc (Borland Delphi for Windows) 14.01 15. Eiffel se Release -0.74 (Tuesday May 7th 2002) 16. ElastiC elastic Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Marco Pantaleoni. All rights reserved. 17. Erlang erlang Erlang (THREADS) (BEAM) emulator version 5.2.3.3 18. Forth bigforth bigforth 386-Win32 rev. 2.0.0 19. Forth gforth gforth 0.5.0 20. Haskell ghc The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 5.04.2 21. ICI ici ICI 4.0.5 22. Icon icon Icon Version 9.3.1. May 4, 1998 23. Java java Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.1_03-b02) 24. JavaScript jscript 5.6.0.8513 (WSH Version 5.6) 25. Lua lua Lua 4.0 26. Lua lua5 27. Mercury mercury Mercury 0.10.1 28. Modula-2 modula2 O2/M2 development system v2.50 (c) 1991-2001 Excelsior, LLC. (build 20.02.2002) 29. Modula-3 modula3 SRC Modula-3 version 3.5 (February 1, 1995) 30. Nice nice ICI 4.0.5 31. Ocaml ocamlb The Objective Caml compiler, version 3.06 (Byte Code) 32. Ocaml ocaml The Objective Caml compiler, version 3.06 33. Oz oz Mozart Compiler 1.2.5 (20030214) playing Oz 3 34. PHP php PHP 4.3.1 (cli) (built: Feb 15 2003 23:07:00) Copyright (c) 1997-2002 The PHP Group Zend Engine v1.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2002 Zend Technologies 35. Parrot parrot This is parrot version 0.0.9-devel built for i386-MSWin32 36. Pascal vpascal Virtual Pascal Version 2.1.243 Copyright (C) 2000 vpascal.com 37. Pascal fpascal Free Pascal Compiler version 1.0.4 [2000/12/30] for i386 38. Perl perl This is perl, v5.8.0 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread 39. Perl cygperl This is perl, v5.8.0 built for cygwin-multi-64int 40. Pike pike Pike v7.4 release 10 41. Pliant pliant Pliant dynamic reflexive compiler, release 81, debugging level 0, for i386 under Windows, compiled as a DLL using GCC (registers calling convention). 42. Python python Python 2.3.2 43. REBOL rebol 44. Rexx rexx REXX-Regina_3.0.1 4.95 12 May 2002 45. Ruby ruby ruby 1.6.7 (2002-03-01) [i586-mswin32] 46. S-Lang slang S-Lang Library Version: 1.4.6 47. SML smlnj Standard ML of New Jersey, Version 110.0.7, September 28, 2000 - - 48. Scheme guile Guile 1.4 49. Simula cim cim-3.36-i686-pc-cygwin 50. Tcl tcl 8.4.2 51. VBScript vbscript 5.6.0.7426 (WSH Version 5.6) Languages that compile to native code are in Bold Italics .

About the Languages The languages that are in bold italics compile to machine code. The others are either byte-compiled or just interpreted. A few Win32-specific notes: For many languages I've just used the binary distribution provided by the makers (or somebody else). The relevant information are available on the language page. I've done this mainly because I think that it is generally normal for Win32 users (as opposed to Linux/Unix users) to use an already compiled, ready to install program instead of compiling everything from scratch. I tried to resort to building the language only when the provided binary did not work out of the box. Note that this also means that I'm accepting all the compilation flags and/or possible optimization as set by the original builder. Many languages (gcc, for example, but some others too) are depending on the Cygwin subsystem (more details about this). Other languages (Ocaml, for example, but some others too) make use of external C and/or Assembler compiler. Most of the times, I've accepted the provided default configuration. Additional information about the compiler(s) used are available on the language page.