How do I pick the "best way" to do something? In particular, I want the fastest way, using the fewest resources, to sum up the values in an array of arbitrary length. I could do it in a loop with a bucket, I could do it recursively, I could do it with a join and an eval, etc. What's the "best" way? Is there a "better" way? How do I measure? How do I pick? 
# Iterative
sub SumArryItr { my $agg = 0; $agg += $_ for @_;  return $agg }

# Recursive
use feature 'current_sub';
sub SumArryRcs { 1==@_?$_[0]:1>@_?die:shift(@_)+__SUB__->(@_) }

# Eval Trick
sub SumArryEvl { eval join "+", @_ }

# Test
my @array = ( -249, 0,  74, 65, 80, 72 );
print "Sum: ", join( ", ", @array ), "\n";
print "Itr: ", SumArryItr( @array ), "\n";
print "Rcs: ", SumArryRcs( @array ), "\n";
print "Evl: ", SumArryEvl( @array ), "\n";

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merci

In reply to Best way to sum an array? by Anonymous Monk

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