Does anyone know where I could find reviews or reports on tasks that people implemented in two or more scripting languages to see which was more suited to a specific job? I want to know which languages are best suited to which types of operation so that I can make the most of them.
"Types of operation" could be sockets, the file system, logic evaluation, regex, or drawing.
I'm mostly interested in Python, PHP, Perl, and Ruby.
The best thing to do would be to create your own benchmarks for the specific tasks you are interested in. Pick languages that you like working in and then write benchmarks for the system you will be using and the task you will be performing. If you are very concerned about speed I would also recommend looking at the individual operations and how to optimize them in each of the languages (examples: argument order, memory usage...)
Benchmarks of scripting languages doing the same task?