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

[Gary Baluha]

On 6/28/07, Daniel Bourque <dbourque at weatherdata.com> wrote:
>
>  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.
>

The main reason I need something other than shell is because I need to do
some work with arrays that I can't do in shell.  I may end up just using
perl instead of C.

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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