Just a couple little things. About caching: TT2 compiles a template to a Perl subroutine and caches it, which is very fast indeed! It also allows you to save this Perl subroutine to disk so the next time a system like mod_perl starts up you don't even have to parse the template. Sweet! (Yes, I'm a big fan of TT.)

Another nifty benefit that you touched on briefly is the consistent notation for variable access. For instance you can start out a template using a hash user:

 my $tmpl = Template->new();
 $tmpl->process( 'user_form.tmpl',
                 { user => 
                       { name => 'Bruce Springsteen',
                         last_login => '2000-01-01 05:45:00' },
                   common_date_format => \&my_date_format } );
[download]

user_form.tmpl

<p>Welcome [% user.name %]. Your last login was
[% common_date_format( user.last_login ) %].</p>
[download]

Later, you might want to make user an object which has the methods name() and last_login():

 my $user = User->fetch( 'theboss' );
 my $tmpl = Template->new();
 $tmpl->process( 'user_form.tmpl',
                 { user => $user,
                   common_date_format => \&my_date_format } );
[download]

This requires no modification to your template, which makes refactoring a larger system a more palatable task.

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode