While examining the D word count program and comparing it to a simpler Icon implementation, I ran into this website comparing various languages against a variety of benchmarks.

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

The author of these tests says he hasn't been able to work on them for over a year, so they are "frozen" until further notice.  I told him about D which he had not known about.  It might be interesting to see how D compares!

More samples of Icon code for those interested:

http://www.byte.com/art/9405/sec12/art2.htm http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/library/sprogs.htm