I almost always do use prepare_cached (decided against it for the example above), but that won't speed up the initial generation of SQL. Also, its not like converting map to x is obfu. I actually think its slightly cleaner, and gets bonus points for being faster.

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I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated