Right. And using fixed values instead of generic subroutines appears to be much more (and more and more) fast:

#! perl -sw
use strict;
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

my $mapgen = sub { return map 5, (1..1000); } ;
my $xgen   = sub { return (5) x 1000 ; } ;

cmpthese( 10000, {
    mapgen    => $mapgen,
    xgen    => $xgen,
});

__END__
[download]

gives, on my lightly-loaded Pentium IV 1.5Ghz,

Benchmark: timing 10000 iterations of mapgen, xgen...
    mapgen:  5 wallclock secs ( 5.04 usr +  0.03 sys =  5.07 CPU) @ 19
+72.39/s (n=10000)
      xgen:  0 wallclock secs ( 0.03 usr +  0.00 sys =  0.03 CPU) @ 33
+3333.33/s
(n=10000)
            (warning: too few iterations for a reliable count)
           Rate mapgen   xgen
mapgen   1972/s     --   -99%
xgen   333333/s 16800%     --
[download]

So map loses again. Uhm... it's the second time that other functions are far faster than map... I'd be interested in seeing a real case where map is the faster choice... does anyone have any?

Ciao!
--bronto

# Another Perl edition of a song:
# The End, by The Beatles
END {
  $you->take($love) eq $you->made($love) ;
}