I read up on the buffering issues, but confess, I have no idea what buffering is other than a place to store data (I assume in the memory) for quick access?

Buffering is, for example, about reading more data from the disk then you currently need, based on the assumption you will probably also need the next data chunks. The idea is that it doesn't take much more to read a full memory page than to read just a few bytes. So, you read the whole page from the disk and buffer what you don't need immediately. But, in general, Perl is doing this kind of buffering without you having to do something.

Another keyword which might be of interest to you is caching. For example, storing in memory data that are costly to calculate, to avoid calculating it again. You might want to have a look to the Memoize module, which automatize some caching for you.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.