A comparative evaluation of imperative and functional implementations of the imap protocol

Francesco Cesarini, Viviana Pappalardo, Corrado Santoro

Abstract: This paper describes a comparative analysis of several implementations of the IMAP4 client-side protocol, written in Erlang, C#, Java, Python and Ruby. The aim is basically to understand whether Erlang is able to fit the requirements of such a kind of applications, and also to study some parameters to evaluate the suitability of a language for the development of certain type of programs. We analysed five different libraries, comparing their characteristics through some software metrics: number of source lines of code, memory consumption, performances (execution time) and functionality of primitives. We describe pros and cons of each library and we conclude on the suitability of Erlang as a language for the implementation of protocol- and string-intensive TCP/IP-based applications.