use Benchmark;

timethese(1000000, { 'Method one' => '&one', 'Method two' => '&two' } );

sub one {
	my $number = "213";
	my $padded = sprintf("%09d",$number);
	#print $padded,"\n"; 
	# the above line is only uncommented when
	# benchmarking with 1 loop to test to make
	# sure resulting number is what we want
}

sub two {
	my $number = "213";
	my $padded = "000000000";
	my $length = length($number);
	substr($padded,(-$length),$length,$number);
	#print $padded,"\n";
}