Re: [Boost-users] boost.regex vs perl

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-11-22 12:14:40

Jeff Garland wrote:
> Keeping in mind John's caveats, I find the language shootout website
> to be an interesting way to compare.  Here's a c++ vs perl results:
>
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gpp&lang2=perl
>
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=regexdna&lang=all
>
> The regex-dna test is written using boost-regex and tests out ~2.4
> times slower and with a larger memory footprint than the perl
> version.  Note that this is the *only* benchmark where perl
> outperforms c++.

:-(

> That said, it's one data point and what you're doing may have totally
> different results.  That's not to mention the effect of the compiler
> -- gcc doesn't have a greatest reputation for optimization although
> it's been improving.  And, you're also depending on other programmers
> to write good benchmarks.

Yep, looking at the source code for the test, my first impression is that 
most of the time is likely to be taken up with the iostream code.  I also 
notice that the C-language PCRE test takes almost exactly the same amount of 
time as the two C++ / Boost-Regex tests, in spite of avoiding high level 
constructs like std::string.  Might be tempting to try and do better...

Cheers, John.