No... that would be known as the slow way. This is an operation which should only have to traverse the array *once* where sort() has higher overhead (perhaps gjb has it right as O(n*log(n)) versus O(n)).

The better answer is to use something akin to what you posted. I'd want to check for undefined values as well. For an answer I just copied right from a toy mapping app I just coded up last night.

sub max { my $m;
          for (@_) {
            next unless defined;
            $m = $_, next unless defined $m;
            $m = $_, next if $m < $_;
          }
          $m }
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__SIG__
use B;
printf "You are here %08x\n", unpack "L!", unpack "P4", pack
  "L!", B::svref_2object(sub{})->OUTSIDE;
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