Your results are hardly surprising but I disagree with podmaster that the benchmark is "useless." The whole point of benchmarking is to compare different ways of doing things. Sometimes the tasks which have more steps and seem like more work are handled more efficiently by the underlying architecture.

This just isn't one of those cases.

I don't think that the results here are at all sufficient to recommend using list assignment over shift. That's still a sylistic concern. Your functions will almost certainly be complex enough to make the task of retrieving your arguments relatively insignificant. It's likely that if a few microseconds really matter you should either inline that code rather than use a sub or, better yet, just start rewriting your script in assembly.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";