ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> gcc -v 2>&1 | tail -1
gcc version 4.8.2 (GCC) 
ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> gcc -O3 -o test-function-call-overhead test-function-call-overhead.c
ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> ./test-function-call-overhead ; ./test-function-call-overhead ; ./test-function-call-overhead ; ./test-function-call-overhead ; ./test-function-call-overhead 
test-function-call-overhead.c: 1146459793.0955 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.c: 1199002775.4335 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.c: 1184376060.8398 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.c: 1201304106.6805 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.c: 1201901923.7653 calls per second

ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> perl -v | head -2 | tail -1
This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 1 (v5.18.1) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi
ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> perl test-function-call-overhead.pl ; perl test-function-call-overhead.pl ; perl test-function-call-overhead.pl ; perl test-function-call-overhead.pl ; perl test-function-call-overhead.pl
test-function-call-overhead.pl:   6132012.0064 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.pl:   6292715.6129 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.pl:   6276993.7750 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.pl:   5550369.3520 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.pl:   6217242.5169 calls per second

ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> python -V
Python 2.7.5
ttk@wip:~/prog/vs/vs/call> python test-function-call-overhead.py ; python test-function-call-overhead.py ; python test-function-call-overhead.py ; python test-function-call-overhead.py ; python test-function-call-overhead.py 
test-function-call-overhead.py:   2179415.2265 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.py:   2242591.0139 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.py:   2216800.9406 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.py:   2282762.8784 calls per second
test-function-call-overhead.py:   2288000.9226 calls per second

ANSI-C function call performance is about 190x that of perl
ANSI-C function call performance is about 530x that of python
perl   function call performance is about 2.8x that of python