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**Tom Hanlin** · 11 May 2004, 11:57 AM

Source code may be posted in the Source Code forum. Large programs
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section. Please be sure to note whether your code is copyrighted or
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------------------
Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

**Marco Pontello** · 12 May 2004, 11:22 AM

IMHO, that bench is more a binary FP vs decimal test case.
Have you tried implementing it in PowerBASIC and getting the right results for the million records data set?

sumT = 1004737.58
sumB = 57628.30
sumD = 25042.17

Bye!

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**Michael Mattias** · 20 May 2004, 02:08 PM

ok, i did a version.

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=24241

mcm

**Roger Rines** · 20 May 2004, 05:47 PM

This is interesting and will take me more time to digest, but in the mean time
here is what the output is showing for the large file:

SumT 1,004,737.58
SumB 57,628.30
SumD 25,042.17
Processed 1,000,000 Records in 21.49 Seconds

PBWIN 7.04 on PIV @1.5 & 650MB - W2K (SP4)

EDIT: 20040521:
Correct file found from Michael's reference. New Results Shown.

------------------
Roger...
(Mail to rdrines at SpamCop dot Net)

[This message has been edited by Roger Rines (edited May 21, 2004).]

**Michael Mattias** · 20 May 2004, 06:16 PM

Did you use the correct test file? You want the BINARY file, not the BCD.

You want the one in this archive:
http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/expon180-1e6b.zip

You will note on the page http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/telcoSpec.html

In either case, if sumD is unexpectedly 0 then probably the BCD data file is being used when the testcase expects the binary data file.

[This message has been edited by Michael Mattias (edited May 20, 2004).]

**Marco Pontello** · 20 May 2004, 07:03 PM

Originally posted by Michael Mattias:
OK, I did a version.

On my system (Athlon XP 2200+) this take 7.50sec; the reference implementation in C# 2.0sec.
It's to be noted that .NET FileStream & StreamWriter does buffer the I/O.

Bye!

------------------
Try TrID file identifier! Over 1070 filetypes and counting...
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[This message has been edited by Marco Pontello (edited May 21, 2004).]

**Michael Mattias** · 21 May 2004, 06:29 AM

>On my system (Athlon XP 2200+) this take 7.50sec

An interesting note I got from Mike Cowlishaw of IBM / UK as a response to my note that although the benchmark was written primarily for COBOL programmers...

Point of the benchmark is *not* to measure language A against language B (or OpSys X against Y). It is: here's a problem, here's the data as it is usually presented (2 options), code it up in the most maintainable way, what's the result.

(He mentioned the operating system because I pointed out that the test file stores the call duration in a format called "COMP-5" .. which is supposed to be "binary integers with the MSB-LSB ordering native to the operating system." As you note in the code, I had to change the order of the bytes because the test file was produced on an IBM mainframe which does not store binary integers in Intel order. I guarantee this would run a whole lot faster if the call duration were stored in a 32-bit Intel-ordered long integer, which would hold a call duration of more than 68 years. But, in real life, we encounter "weird" choices for data storage every day, and the condition of the specification was that duration is a maximum 15-decimal digit value, and the data come off an IBM mainframe).

Again, I posted this because I've seen posted here too many "do nothing" loops which are posited as 'benchmarks.'

MCM

**Marco Pontello** · 21 May 2004, 06:52 AM

I read the note on the site, and also read many comments about that "telco bench" on the newsgroups around.
The point, IMHO, is that this is mostly a decimal (decimal FP, instead of binary FP or fixed point) "show case".
Note the dist rate: the fact that's 0.00894 isn't a casual choice, nor the requested rounding.
Mike Cowlishaw is indeed one of the big supporter of hardware implementation of decimal FP (we have FPUs, maybe one day will have also DFPUs...).

I also made a PB version of the bench, with buffered input & output, that run on my system on 1.7sec.
But the result was nearly 20 unit above (or below? don't remember) off the correct/specified result.

As you have seen, you have to do some serious "hacking" to correct theese errors, at the expense of performance and (more important) code clarity and maintenability.
I think that's really no point in doing this "job" in this way; for this specific result, if I had to choose I will use a different dev system (one that implement decimal FP).

I know that's the artist, not the paintbrush... but I think a different paintbrush may be better suited!

Speaking of code that do something...
How about a code that take all the lines (an arbitrary number, let's say even 2M) passed from standard input, and write them to stadard ouput in reversed order, for example?
Or something that spellcheck a list of words against another list?
These are others jobs in witch different languages may be more or less suited...

Bye!

------------------
Try TrID file identifier! Over 1070 filetypes and counting...
Give a powerfull scriptable Lua interface to your application with PowerBLua
PBTracer - Tracer / Profiler for PowerBASIC (soon!)

[This message has been edited by Marco Pontello (edited May 21, 2004).]

**Michael Mattias** · 21 May 2004, 07:28 AM

I also made a PB version of the bench, with buffered input & output, that run on my system on 1.7sec.
But the result was nearly 20 unit above (or below? don't remember) off the correct/specified result

Hmm, mine took longer to run, but gets the right answer.

I wonder: Which one of us will Mr. Donald Trump keep as his Apprentice?

**Marco Pontello** · 21 May 2004, 07:45 AM

Originally posted by Michael Mattias:
Hmm, mine took longer to run, but gets the right answer.

I wonder: Which one of us will Mr. Donald Trump keep as his Apprentice?

Uhm... if that was the point, I suppose I could simply compile the reference version, and use that!
Less development time, no testing needed, smaller exe, less time to give the right result!

But I "relaunch" with the reverse STDIN problem above mentioned.
This is a PB version:

Code:

#DIM ALL

%InitialBufferSize = 50000
%BufferSizeIncrement = 100000

FUNCTION PBMAIN
  
  DIM Counter AS LONG
  DIM BufferSize AS LONG
  DIM inpf AS LONG
  DIM i AS LONG
  
  DIM t AS SINGLE, tt AS SINGLE
  t = TIMER
  
  BufferSize = %InitialBufferSize
  DIM Buffer(BufferSize) AS STRING 
  
  inpf = FREEFILE
  OPEN HANDLE GETSTDIN FOR INPUT AS inpf LEN=4096
  
  DO WHILE NOT EOF(inpf)
    INCR Counter
    IF Counter > BufferSize THEN
      BufferSize = BufferSize + %BufferSizeIncrement
      REDIM PRESERVE Buffer(BufferSize)
    END IF
    LINE INPUT #inpf, Buffer(Counter)
  LOOP

  FOR i = Counter TO 1 STEP -1
    STDOUT Buffer(i)
  NEXT i

  tt = TIMER

  PRINT tt-t;"sec."

END FUNCTION

And this is a Lua version (that I could use inside a PB program):

Code:

t = os.clock()
local lines = {}
local numl = 0

for l in io.lines() do
    numl = numl + 1
    lines[numl] = l
end
for i= numl, 1, -1 do
    io.write(lines[i], "\n")
end

tt = os.clock()
print(tt-t.."sec.")

Note that the Lua ver is faster (about half the time, for a 1M lines)...
But, aside from speed (one can surely equal and probably beat the Lua ver using PB, just going a little lower level, with custom memory allocation, etc.), it's simpler.

Bye!

------------------
Try TrID file identifier! Over 1070 filetypes and counting...
Give a powerfull scriptable Lua interface to your application with PowerBLua
PBTracer - Tracer / Profiler for PowerBASIC (soon!)

[This message has been edited by Marco Pontello (edited May 21, 2004).]

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