Emmanuel Touzery wrote:
> i have the feeling (unconfirmed) that perl is optimising it away since 
> the result is unused or the operation repeated or something. i created a 
> file with 1000000 lines repeating the addition and perl is very slow too 
> then (and ruby too).

do you mean you did:

#!/usr/bin/{perl,ruby}
1234567+123456;
1234567+123456;
1234567+123456;
1234567+123456;
1234567+123456;
...

?

then have you factored out compilation overhead? I would wild-guess that 
Perl is slightly slower than Ruby, due to its complex syntaxes?

-- 
dave