Instead of GZip metrics for code size, maybe a good measure of imperative language code size would be the "cyclomatic complexity" metric.
It would also be interesting to see results for Fortran, Java, C++, etc. across a range of old and newer compilers. Can one measure "cyclomatic complexity" for functional languages? However: From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_metric Modern software development practitioners are likely to point out that naive and simplistic metrics can cause more harm than good. ALSO: one is often more interested in "Software Quality" factors * 4.1.1 Understandability * 4.1.2 Completeness * 4.1.3 Conciseness * 4.1.4 Portability * 4.1.5 Consistency * 4.1.6 Maintainability * 4.1.7 Testability * 4.1.8 Usability * 4.1.9 Reliability * 4.1.10 Structuredness * 4.1.11 Efficiency * 4.1.12 Security Which seem only to be qualitatively "metricable" and not quantitatively "metricable". Benchmarks of any type only seem to be applicable to your program if your program is fairly similar to the benchmark. -- Regards, Casey _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell