Neat peice of golf:)

Trouble is, although I probably misled you by the return ($a+$b+$c); in the benchmark code. I need the three values ($a, $b, $c) seperately in the real code.

Adding them together to return them was just a lazy way of making sure that the different methods gave the same results. I should have returned a list.

Actually no, it was me just not paying attention. You could always do

$H{('a'x4,'b'x4,'c'x3)[$len]} += $k[$len -1] << (8* (($len>8?$len:$len
+-1)%4));
#OR no code change++ but symbolic--
${('a'x4,'b'x4,'c'x3)[$len]} += $k[$len -1] << (8* (($len>8?$len:$len-
+1)%4));
[download]

--
I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.

I've tried to make this work. I added the implied while loop and put brackets around the 'a' etc. to make it generate lists not strings, but I still can get it to produce the same results as the original. Can you see what I missed?

sub belg4mit {
    my %H;
    my ($len, @k) = @_;
    my ($a,$b,$c) = (0)x3;
    while($len--) {
         $H{(('a')x4,('b')x4,('c')x3)[$len]}
            += $k[$len -1] << (8* ( ($len > 8 ? $len : $len - 1 )%4 ) 
+);
    }
    return ($H{a}||0)+($H{b}||0)+($H{c}||0);
}
[download]

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Examine what is said, not who speaks.

The 7th Rule of perl club is -- pearl clubs are easily damaged. Use a diamond club instead.