quite true (and ++). perl will "over allocate" memory on the assumption you're always going to need more. If you know ahead of time (or can calculate at run-time), you can prevent the over allocation by preallocating memory (checkout perldata):

my @array;
$#array = 512;

# or 

my %hash;
keys %hash = 512;
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but I don't think this is an issue with the original post.

-derby