[Shootout-list] main benchmark

[Brent Fulgham]

On 2004-09-26 17:05:50 -0700 Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> Fine.  The *MAIN BENCHMARK* should only test the least common
> denominator of all languages.  It cannot, for instance, mandate 
> garbage
> collection.  3rd generation capabilities, i.e. like C, are the only
> things all of the languages have in common.

What tests do we have that mandate garbage collection?

Here's what we've got:

1.  Ackermann:  Tests deep recrusion.
2.  Ary:  Kernighan and Van Wyk's array test.
3.  Echo:  Tests socket communication.
4.  Except:  Error/Exception handling
5.  Fibo:  Fibonacci numbers.  More recursion -- perhaps this is 
redundant.
6.  hash:  This is about to go away.  Perhaps we should make it a new 
test,
such as "dictionary" or "map"?
7.  hash2:  A better hash.  This will become the only hash.
8.  heapsort:  In-place heap sort test.
9.  hello:  Simple test used to gauge start-up costs.
10.  list:  Simple list (push/pop) test.
11.  matrix:  Matrix math.
12.  methcall:  Method call costs.
13.  moments:  Statistical moments of input data.
14.  nestedloop:  Costs of heavily nested loops.
15.  objinst:  Cost of instantiating an object/structure.
16.  plugin:  (NEW) Cost of loading code at run-time for execution.
17.  prodcons:  Producer/Consumer thread concurrency test.
18.  random:  Generate random number
19.  regexmatch:  Regular expression matching test.
20.  reversefile:  Reverse contents of a file.
21.  ringmsg:  (NEW) cost of sending/receiving messages across
process boundaries.
22.  sieve:  Classical sieve of eratosthenes generator for prime 
numbers.
23.  spellcheck:  Compare input file against a dictionary of valid 
words.
24.  strcat:  Cost of constructing/extending strings.
25.  sumcol:  Sum a column of numbers.
26.  wc:  Count characters, words, lines in a file.
27.  wordfreq:  Determine frequence of words in a document.

I don't see anything C can't handle here -- indeed, except for the two 
new
tests C solutions are available for all tests.

None require anything fancy.  None require garbage collection, full 
tower
of numerics, etc.  I'm not sure which tests you are complaining about.

-Brent