sort {} grep {} @foo; #### #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w use Benchmark; use strict; my @data; my %seen; foreach ( 1..100_000 ) { push @data, int($_/2) } fisher_yates_shuffle ( \@data ); #my @gs = gs(); print join ( "\n", @gs ); #my @sg = sg(); print join ( "\n", @sg ); timethese ( 20, { sort_grep => \&sg, grep_sort => \&gs, } ); sub gs { return sort { $a <=> $b } grep { ! $seen{$_} ++ }@data; } sub sg { return grep { ! $seen{$_} ++ } sort { $a <=> $b } @data; } # fisher_yates_shuffle( \@array ) : from Perl Cookbook sub fisher_yates_shuffle { my $array = shift; my $i; for ($i = @$array; --$i; ) { my $j = int rand ($i+1); next if $i == $j; @$array[$i,$j] = @$array[$j,$i]; } } #### Benchmark: timing 20 iterations of grep_sort, sort_grep... grep_sort: 5 wallclock secs ( 4.70 usr + 0.02 sys = 4.72 CPU) @ 4.24/s (n=20) sort_grep: 16 wallclock secs (15.56 usr + 0.03 sys = 15.59 CPU) @ 1.28/s (n=20)