[hobbit] Server-side extension scripts: shell vs. C programming

[Daniel Bourque]

Too bad you didn't write it in perl, then you could have just used 
perlcompile to spit out C code for actual compiling.

About shell and other interpreted languages, what gets expensive is 
looping, since for each loop iteration you must interpret, compile, and 
run each lines in that loop. With shell script, add to that forking, 
which is expensive too.

On modern computers, the time saved might not be worth dealing with 
recoding your script in C. All the "magic" stuff like back ticks is not 
very fun to implement in C. Plus you have to deal with a strictly typed 
language, no automatic memory management, etc

you'd be better off recoding it in perl. then you'll have an easy way to 
get it in C and see if that really saves you time.


Daniel Bourque
Systems/Network Administrator
Weather Data Inc

Office (316) 266-8013
Office (316) 265-9127 ext. 3013
Mobile (316) 640-1024



Gary Baluha wrote:

> I remember reading somewhere in the Hobbit documentation that when an 
> extension script starts to do a lot of things, it should be coded in a 
> compiled language such as C, instead of as a shell script.  I have a 
> custom script that takes a lot of data and converts it into NCV 
> graphs, and I believe it is at the point where I should consider 
> rewriting it in C.
>
> Before I get to far into it, is the hobbitd_sample.c something that I 
> should look at for this?  I'm not sure if I'm reading the 
> documentation on it correctly, if it is a good example for an external 
> script.  Has anyone else had experience in needing to convert a shell 
> script to C/C++/etc for Hobbit?  I'm just trying to get a rough idea 
> of how much effort this will require.

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