The battle of the languages part II

Giovanni Intini — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:41:21 +0000

My previous post about a programming contest I had with my friends was wildly popular. Much much more than I even thought possible.

I started with a simple comparison of PHP, C, Ruby, Erlang and Javascript and ended up with lots of comments where people posted interesting implementations in more and more languages, even obscure ones (to me) like Haskell and Ocaml.

I owe everyone a fairer benchmark so I will do the test again, this time testing the following languages:

C
Common Lisp
Erlang
Haskell
Javascript
Java
Ocaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

I need submissions for most of these languages, and I actually am quite open to submissions for the languages I speak

The rules are simple, the program has to store the results in an array (not just count them) and has to run without any strange libraries or compilers or compiler switches. To avoid interpreter starting time problems, please submit programs that autotime themselves.

As usual we’ll find the pythagorean triplets up to 5000. The reference implementation is the following, in Ruby:

t = Time.now
result = []
2.upto(5000) do |c| 
  1.upto(c-1) do |b|
    a = Math.sqrt(c*c - b*b)
    result << [a.to_i, b, c] if a.to_i == a 
  end
end
puts Time.now - t

This code takes 15.70s to run on my macbook pro.

Now it’s your turn!

Update: Lua version by Sindisil

local tt = os.clock()
local result = {}
local c
  for c = 2, 5000 do
    local b
    for b = 1, c-1 do
      local a = math.sqrt(c*c - b*b)
      if a == math.floor(a) then
      result[#result+1] = { a, b, c }
    end
  end
end
print(os.clock() - tt)

It takes 5.48s to run on my box.

Update: new Ruby version.

include Math
 
a, b, c = 0
result = []
2.upto(5000) do |c| 
  d = c * c
  1.upto(c-1) do |b|
    a = sqrt(d - b*b)
    result << [a.floor, b, c] if a.floor == a 
  end
end
puts Process.times[0]

Following Gabriele Renzi’s suggestions we now have a faster ruby version: 12.30s

Update: faster Lua version from Chris Swetenham, it runs in 3.44s

local tt = os.clock()
local result = {}
local c
local n = 1
local math = math
local sqrt = math.sqrt
local floor = math.floor
 
for c = 2, 5000 do
  local b
  for b = 1, c-1 do
    local a = sqrt(c*c - b*b)
    if a == floor(a) then
      result[n] = { a, b, c }
      n = n + 1
    end
  end
end
 
print(os.clock() - tt)

Update: PHP version by Fullo


$start = microtime(true);
$a = $b = $c = 0;
$result = array();
 
for ($c = 2; $c <= 5000; $c++) {
  for ($b = 1; $b < $c; $b++) {
    $a = sqrt($c*$c - $b*$b);
	if (intval($a) == $a) 
       $result[] = array($a,$b,$c);              
  }
}
echo (microtime(true) - $start);
?>

It runs in 9.73s.

Update: Python version from ludo, it runs in 11.2s

from time import clock
 
start = clock()
 
from math import sqrt
 
results = []
 
for c in xrange(2, 5001):
  d = c * c
  for b in xrange(1, c):
    a = sqrt(d - b * b)
    if a % 1 == 0.0:
      results.append((a, b, c))
 
print clock() - start

The results for now:

Lua 3.44
PHP 9.73
Python 11.20
Ruby 12.30

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The battle of the languages part II