my @ary_copy = (@array); straightforward, easy to understand

I agree, and it is exactly how I usually do this. Unfortunately, I ran into some huge data and couldn't copy without installing additional RAM :)

But the closure trick is very clever. I wonder which is faster

Wonder no more, unless my benchmark is wrong, of course :)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);

our @array;

sub pdcawley {
    my @copy = @array;
    while (my @chunk = splice @copy, 0, 2) { }
}

sub juerd {
    my $refs = sub { \@_ }->(@array);
    while (my @chunk = splice @$refs, 0, 2) { }
}

sub bench {
    printf "\n\e[1m%s\e[0m\n", shift;
    cmpthese(-10, { pdcawley => \&pdcawley, juerd => \&juerd });
}

@array = (1) x 32767;
bench "Long array, tiny values";

@array = ("x" x 32) x 32767;
bench "Long array, small values";

@array = (1) x 32;
bench "Short array, tiny values";

@array = ("x" x 32) x 32;
bench "Short array, small values";

@array = ("x" x (2**20)) x 32;
bench "Short array, large values";

@array = ("x" x (8 * 2**20)) x 32;
bench "Short array, huge values";
[download]

(Note: stripped)

Long array, tiny values
pdcawley 26.1/s       --     -17%
juerd    31.4/s      20%       --

Long array, small values
pdcawley 12.9/s       --     -38%
juerd    20.7/s      60%       --

Short array, tiny values
pdcawley 32909/s       --      -1%
juerd    33197/s       1%       --

Short array, small values
pdcawley 19203/s       --     -17%
juerd    23084/s      20%       --

Short array, large values
pdcawley 1.83/s       --     -53%
juerd    3.89/s     112%       --

Short array, huge values
pdcawley   4.32       --     -53%
juerd      2.04     112%       --
[download]

I'd like to test it with an array of 32 elements of 20 MB each, but the copy doesn't fit in memory.

Anyhow, it seems that using the array of aliases is much more efficient than using a copy, especially with large data sets.

Juerd
- http://juerd.nl/
- spamcollector_perlmonks@juerd.nl (do not use).