passing data between two interpreted languages

junk.php

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php

$n=10;
$meth=$argv[1];

if($argv[2]) {
    $n=$argv[2];
}

$str='str';
for($i=0;$i<$n-5;$i++) {
    $str.="i";
}
$str .= "ng";

switch($meth) {
case 'arg':
    system('./junk.py -s ' . $str);
    break;
case 'tmp':
    $fname = tempnam('/tmp','junk');
    $f = fopen($fname,'wb');
    fwrite($f, $str);
    fclose($f);

    system('./junk.py -f ' . $fname);
    break;
case 'stdin':
    $f = popen('./junk.py','wb');
    fwrite($f, $str);
    pclose($f);
    break;
}

junk.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import argparse
import os
import sys

p = argparse.ArgumentParser()
p.add_argument('-f')
p.add_argument('-s')
opts = p.parse_args()

f=None
if opts.f:
    f = open(opts.f, 'rb')
elif opts.s:
    s = opts.s
else:
    f = sys.stdin

if f:
    s = f.read()
# force some work in mem
b = len(''.join(s.upper()[::-1].split()))
print "hey, got %s bytes" % b

if opts.f:
    os.unlink(opts.f)

timing.txt

cru@mclappy:~ $ for y in tmp stdin arg; do time for x in {1..100}; do ./junk.php $y 200000 > /dev/null; done; done

real	0m11.431s
user	0m9.040s
sys	0m2.011s

real	0m11.335s
user	0m9.015s
sys	0m1.959s

real	0m14.142s
user	0m11.556s
sys	0m2.199s