Merge sort benchmark

In the year 2008 on newLISP 9.2 hardware: Intel Core 2 Duo T5300 1.73 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, Ubuntu Linux

Python 4.058
Perl 4.751
Ruby 8.450
PHP 11.879

On a Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Du 1.83 Ghz, 1GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.5 we get the following times for Perl, Python and newLISP:

newLISP v.9.2 3.918
Perl v.5.8.8 4.859
Python v.2.5 4.999
Ruby v.8.6 6.372

newLISP is still 25% faster than Python when literally translating, but can still be coded to be faster and shorter:
newLISP optimized code 2.877

More benchmarks (year 2004).

In the year 2020 on newLISP 10.7.5

Free BSD 12.2:

Ruby 0.691s
PHP 0.760s
newLISP 0.987s
Perl 1.772
Python 2.145s

MacOS 11.01:

PHP 0.757s
Ruby 0.779s
newLISP 1.145s
Perl 1.891s
Python 1.919s

Newer versions of script languages and operating systems change the order.