Well, it sounds like you're not calling the function properly. Are you doing one of these?

@results = $fast->();
# or
@results = &$fast;
[download]

And you might be interested in compiled regexes:

$re = qr/(\w+)\s+(\w+)/;

# ...

while (<>) {
  push @res, /$re/;
}
[download]

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;