Ruby and Python (was Re: Why is Python a good first scripting language?)

[Alex Martelli]

Michael Hudson wrote:

> Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
> 
>> [alex at lancelot ball]$ time python2.3 -O sieve.py 300000 >/dev/null
>                                        ^^
> This shouldn't make much difference with 2.3...

Right, but I always specify -O when measuring times -- a habit that's
worth keeping at least until every version older than 2.3 gets excised
from one's machine (a time in the future...).


>> 0.69user 0.03system 0:00.95elapsed 75%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
>> 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (343major+4534minor)pagefaults 0swaps
> 
> You have a fast machine!

An 18-months-old 1.2 GHz AMD Athlon with 512MB of used-to-be-good-back-then 
DDR RAM and Linux Mandrake 8.2.  Hardly "state of the art" even when I
configured it (no RAMBUS or anything like that!) and surely way behind
the _current_ state of the art these days.

> This sieve is the second quickest I know in Python (it's due to Tim
> Peters):

Unfortunately I'm not enough of a Ruby coder to be able to transcribe
this (or Tismer's Sieve which you give later) to Ruby...


Alex