use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

sub gr {                        # Guttman-Rosler transform
  map { substr( $_, 3 ) } sort
  map { sprintf( '%03d', /abc(\d+)xyz/ ) . $_ } @_;
}

srand 0;
my @u = map 'abc' . int( rand 1000 ) . 'xyz', 1..500;

cmpthese( -1, { s_aa => sub { my @s = sort @u        },
                s_fi => sub {       ( sort @u )[ 0 ] },
                s_na => sub {    () = sort @u        } } );

cmpthese( -1, { g_aa => sub { my @s = gr @u        },
                g_fi => sub {       ( gr @u )[ 0 ] },
                g_na => sub {    () = gr @u        } } );

##</code><code>##

       Rate s_aa s_na s_fi
s_aa 1037/s   -- -49% -49%
s_na 2017/s  95%   --  -1%
s_fi 2036/s  96%   1%   --

      Rate g_na g_aa g_fi
g_na 237/s   --   0% -14%
g_aa 237/s   0%   -- -14%
g_fi 275/s  16%  16%   --