Perl v. C (was Re: [Nagiosplug-devel] Re: check_by_ssh patch)

[Karl DeBisschop]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:11:00 -0600
Justin Ellison <justin at techadvise.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 11:07, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> > > It depends very much on what you're doing with it.  For
> > > number-crunching it is slower, for uses where it runs, does a few
> > > things, then terminates then the difference can be a lot smaller.
> > > 
> > Datacrunching in general. check_ifoperstatus runs in 6 seconds real
> > time whereas a shellscript checking multiple interfaces at the same
> > time runs in 1 second.
> 
> Ouch!  I'm not getting into the C vs Perl argument, but you have
> something not right if things run that slow.  I am querying a remote
> system 15 routers away from my Nag box:

Relax guys. I didn't mean to say that C plugins would no longer be
supported. Just that the focus of new development will move toward
perl as epn gets more and more stable and trusted. It's hard to deny
that C takes more effort to code, and you don't have the possibilty of
memory allocation errors that have come up in the C plugins from time to
time.

But there will probably alway be a role for C plugins as well, where
performance is critical or where perl libraries are not fully
developed. It's just that the balance will move some.

Add to that the fact that there are for more people comfortable coding a
perl plugin than a C plugin, and I think there's little doubt that the
number of perl plugins will increase faster than the number of C
plugins. That's just reality, not a holy war.

--
Karl