Peter Hickman wrote:
> Isaac Gouy wrote:
> > Peter Hickman wrote:
> >
> >> Time for another update.
> >>
> >> Isaac Gouy provided a Java implementation based on mine (ie still pre
> >> computes the tables in Perl) that brought the times down to sub 9 seconds.
> >>
> >> real 0m8.966s
> >> user 0m5.815s
> >> sys 0m1.488s
> >>
> >
> > sub 9 seconds?
> > 7.3s
> > "real" is elapsed time, which includes all those other processes that
> > grabbed CPU after you gave the time command.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> This is a good point but in all the posts where I have mentioned the
> time taken I have used the real time (which is the best case from 10
> runs - except for the first Perl version) all the way back to the first
> and fourth versions in Perl (473 and 12 minutes). However it does not
> affect the ordering except to push my improved C version ahead of
> William James' revised Ocaml version by just 0.029 of a second.
>
> This late in the proceedings it would only confuse the issue to start
> saying that the first Perl version ran in 251 minutes when 473 minutes
> has been mentioned several times.

Having repeatedly made a mistake in the past is no reason to continue
making the same mistake in the future!

(You're timing for Perl includes 3 or 4 hours of you surfing the web or
installing OCaml or whatever!)


> Besides now that we are getting into
> such short times for the Ocaml and C versions the difference between
> real and user + sys is sub second and it is becoming harder to say that
> one is significantly faster then the other. One more run of William
> James' program and it might make up that 0.029 of a second difference.
>
> Perhaps stepping up to a 6 x 6 grid would allow more meaningful timings?