One file is always faster than many if you are loading the whole mess each time.

Many files makes for cleaner development, and gives you the option of dividing one CGI into many, each of which loads far less data.

My rule of thumb is that by the time it is big enough for the performance difference between one and many files to matter, the performance advantage of having many files so that you don't load it all at once wins. And if loading time is a problem, then you should probably be using mod_perl...

UPDATE
An incidental note. A vague memory is telling me that you might have issues with misplaced line-numbers if you have more than 64K lines in a single source file. That is another reason to use multiple files.

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: Which is better - one large file or multiple files? by tilly
in thread Which is better - one large file or multiple files? by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.