the large file challenge

[Sadhunathan Nadesan]

| 
| Message: 1
| Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 10:39:01 -0700
| Subject: RE: the large file challenge
| From: John Vokey <vokey at uleth.ca>
| To: metacard at lists.runrev.com
| Reply-To: metacard at lists.runrev.com
| 
| To be fair: most of metacard is coded in metatalk; it is a 
| boot-strapped language, much like many of the TILs (threaded 
| interpreted languages) of yesteryears (e.g., forth, apl).
| 


John,

I agree with you too.  I take his point that a C program should not be
slower than a bash script invoking 2 utilities written in C.  If anyone
cares to contribute a better C program, go for it!  Right now I'm running
Pierre's MC revision to see how it does.  This has been fun but I think
we've come to the end.

I think it has come to light that MC holds it's own with compiled
languages.  That was where this whole thing began, I was explaining
to Swami that MC is not a compiled language, then Scott kinda said, so
what, there is not that much difference between compiled and interpreted
languages these days.  That would be supported by the results of the
timing tests, so I'd have to agree with Scott.  However, I'm still
sticking to my guns - MC is not a compiled language. Swami apparently
thought it was.  So I was trying to clarify it for him.  And
that led to all this fun!  :-)

Sadhu