Patrik Hägglund (patrik.hagglund@bredband.net) on 3/5/08 wrote:
---------------------------
>
>Today, OCaml may even be close to 100%, due to compiler improvements. But for me,
>close is not enough ;).
>
>

The question is - whether 100% of 'C' speed is achievable in the languages that you mentioned above as examples of good efficiency, i.e. Ada and Modula-3.
I don't know Modula-3 but in Ada there are cases in which I don't see how compiler will avoid significant run-time overhead.
Example:

with text_io; use text_io;

procedure main  is

 package fp_io is new float_io(float); use fp_io;

 type data_array_t is array (integer range<>) of float;

 type index_t is array (integer range<>) of integer;

 function sum(a: data_array_t; index : index_t)  return float is

 s : float;

 begin

  s := 0.0;

  for k in a'first .. a'last loop

   s := s + a(index(k));

  end loop;

  return s;

 end sum;

 data_vec : data_array_t(0..3) := (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0);

 index : index_t(0..3) := (3, 2, 1, 0); -- simplified, in reality could be result of calculation

begin

  put(sum(data_vec, index));

end main;

In the common case compiler can't omit run-time check of array limits in the inner loop. One could say that the code above is bad Ada and that in good type of index array would be specified more precisely, but that's, IMHO, an idealistic view.