Re: speed of octave interpreter

[Mike Miller]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, John W. Eaton wrote:

> In any case, Octave's interpreter is known to be slow for looping and 
> even slower for recursion.
>
> But, have mercy.  The original goal was not to write a blazingly fast 
> interpreter.  The goal was to write something that would be reliable, 
> relatively easy to maintain and extend, and that would be useful in a 
> finite amount of deveopment time.  Oh, and (originally) written by one 
> person who was not a compiler expert.


We all appreciate your amazing contributions to the scientific community. 
Octave is a spectacular resource.

Now that Octave is becoming mature in many ways, it would be wonderful if 
someone with the know-how could look into ways to speed up looping and 
recursion.  That's always one area (the only one?) where Octave falls 
short when compared with MATLAB.  It's probably a very hard job though and 
it probably will not be easy to find someone with the ability and 
inclination to work on it.  If someone does manage to speed up the Octave 
interpreter, I'm sure his/her help will be very widely recognized and 
appreciated.

Thanks again, John!

Mike

--
Michael B. Miller, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
and Institute of Human Genetics
University of Minnesota
http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/



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