BrowserUk sweetie, just so you know, GrandFather has helped me a lot over the years, so he kind of knows my quirks. What you saw as a knee-jerk reaction, was him seeing me saying something (in this case "faster") which is more than likely a alarm bell in his head actually. I am known to try to prematurely optimize my code. There are a few people on here who have told me not to do it, but I still do anyway. He chides me, I think, because he wants to remind me of one of my bad habits. Now you know about it, I am sure you will more than likely gently nudge me now and again if you see me doing it in the future.

As to my motivation to empty over delete, it is quite simple. I read in delete's doc "But both of these are slower than just assigning the empty list or undefining %HASH or @ARRAY:", so I looked at the suggestion below it, and used it instead. I didn't do any fancy testing (since I don't get testing as you know it) or whatever profiling is. (I think GrandFather was also trying, again, to push me into teaching myself testing which I tend to avoid because of the complexity of it. That is another discussion for another time.)

Now, would you please do me a teeny tiny favor and expand your abbreviations (AV*, HV*, and GCs)? I don't want to get it wrong in my head.

You can relax. GrandFather and others may look like they are coming on strong with their opinions to me, and most likely, it is to push me into the right direction when I appear bound and determined to go wrong. (In some rare cases their pushing worked actually.) So sit back and have a cookie. :)