I am curious how Lite-C compares internally with Lua , AngelScript and other scripting languages and Python ( i.e. memory management, stack-based or heap etc. ) ?

I am considering using Lite-C for some heavy weight coding, I would like to know how Lite-C compares with ordinary C++ , Lua and Python in terms of CPU and memory consumption ?

lite-c is a c compiler so it is in a different league than interpreted languages.

to get an idea about the performance difference between compiled and interpreted languages: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/

i don't know how lite-c compares to other c-compilers though. i guess it is a bit slower since conitec doesn't have the same optimization manpower as microsoft for example.

experiment with the free lite-c a bit!

Well if that is the case then its certainly nice.

But a " compiled " language can be mean many things really, it is more an adjective.

For example both Java and C# are compiled to bytecode ( i.e. C# is compiled to MSIL / CIL ) and then just-in-time compiled ( with C# on-demand ; with Java using HotSpot , basically profile and optimize the bottlenecks ) , at least in the usual, normal case ( it is possible to interpret both or entirely pre-compile to machine code ).

I would assume that Lite-C is compiled to bytecode which is then interpreted in a virtual machine. This is most commonly found in similar scripting languages ( i.e. QuakeC ).

It would be possible to further compile the bytecode ( or just go direct ) to machine code. But that would be fairly complex.

JCL where are you

lite-c compiles to machine code.

Ah my apologies, right there on the front page :

" compiles on the fly to machine code executable "

But can I learn more details on how this compilation is performed ( i.e. optimizations ) ?

The code is straight compiled, without optimizations. Therefore lite-C machine code is about 40% slower than machine code compiled with VC++ 5.0 with all optimizations activated.

You can test the performance with the mandelbrot program. It compiles under VC++ as well.

As to the comparision with LUA, Angelscript and so on, that are just interpreted scripting languages and not comparable to lite-C. lite-c is about 10 to 20 times faster and far more flexible and pwerful.