fast language?

i'm looking to computer a few things, but i need a very fast programming language that isn't too complicated to learn. i don't need anything beyond the simple things such as methods/functions, file I/O, etc.

any suggestions?

>>15

i forgot that capitalization on anonymous text boards was the metric by which we measure age (and hence _maturity_, amirite?)

i realise that C is going to be a fast language. but actually my original post stipulated a language which was also relatively easy to learn. perhaps this is too subjective and needed further information (hours, days, weeks?), perhaps not. the point is i wanted a not-so-obvious language which was still computationally fast.

and, for the record, i pretty much disambiguated with >>8, so >>11 is just someone who failed to read, i guess.