OpenEuphoria

Re: Euphoria v.s. Python

• Posted by JJProg at CYBERBURY.NET Feb 23, 1999
• 463 views

EU>>
EU>>Hi,
EU>>
EU>>I came across with another interpreted language called "Python".
EU>>The description reads that it is oop, it has versions available
EU>>in Mac, DOS, Win 3.1, Win 95, Linux, many flavors of Unix and others.
EU>>It has support for Sybase, Informix, Oracle. Also ODBC and SQL.
EU>>
EU>>Has anyone tried Python? How is Euphoria better than Python?

I downloaded Python yesterday, learned most of it today, and I've
concluded that Python has a lot of neat features, but is severely
lacking in several areas.

Python has support for many things that would be very nice to have in
Euphoria, including:
        complex numbers
        packages
        better sequence indexing (Python, for example, can automatically
make a slice go from index i to the end of the sequence like so:
seq[i:])
        ability to assign a list of values to a list of values and other
neat features, for example:
                a = b = 0
                a, b = 0, 1
                [a,b,c] = [1,2,3]
        object-oriented programming (I haven't explored this yet, but I
know it's there; it's in the manual)

But Python also has many bad things about it, including:
        no editor that comes with the language (just a scary interactive
interperter so you can either have it run a file or execute what you
type in, as you type it in, but no way to save it, and no syntax
hilighting, auto-indenting, auto-completion etc.)
        very slow (sieve.ex gets thousands of sieves per second, while
my Python version gets about 75 on my P233MMX with 48MB RAM and Win98)
        bad structure (functions and procedures both defined with def
keyword, there are several different types of sequences utilizing ()'s,
{}'s, and []'s, and no changing characters in a string like string[1] =
's'), no end statements. Here is my sieve.py program so you can see
examples of the bad structure:

import time
import sys
BATCH = 50
BENCH_TIME = 15
SIZE = 500
ON = 1
OFF = 0
def sieve():
        count = 0
        flags = []
        for i in range(SIZE):
                flags.append(ON)
        for i in range(SIZE):
                if flags[i] == ON:
                        prime = 2 * (i+1)
                        prime = prime + 1
                        start = prime + (i+1)
                        for k in range(start-1,SIZE,prime):
                                flags[k] = OFF
                        count = count + 1
        return count
print "prime sieve benchmark ..."
cycles = 0
t = time.clock()
while time.clock() < t + BENCH_TIME:
        for iter in range(BATCH):
                if sieve() != 167:
                        print "whoops!"
                        sys.exit()
        cycles = cycles + BATCH
t = time.clock() - t
print cycles/t," sieves per second"

Note: doesn't display the actual primes, but that doesn't change the
speed.

Then again, you can do neat things like:

a = complex(5,4) # (this is a Python comment) a = 5 + 4i (a complex
number)

for elements in sequence: # (no for i = 1 to x, but there are ways of
doing that... see my program above)
        # do whatever

# the following is an example of a hashtable
languages = []
languages["Euphoria"] = "good"
languages["Basic"] = "bad"
languages["Python"] = "ugly"

Python also provides an enormous number of other neat things, too long
to explain them all here. In conclusion, Python is great for some
things, but terrible for others. The interactive interperter makes a
cool calculator...

Jeffrey Fielding
JJProg at cyberbury.net
http://members.tripod.com/~JJProg/