I played around with various ways of speeding up the Perl function. This was the fastest: 
sub get_date_perl2 {

    $_[0] =~ m/[|](\d{4})(\d{4})[|]/;
    return $2.$1;
}

[download]
I added this to the benchmarks as Perl2: 
Benchmark: timing 50 iterations of Inline, Ovidian, Perl, Perl2...
    Inline: 19 wallclock secs (18.72 usr +  0.01 sys = 18.73 CPU) @  2
+.67/s
   Ovidian: 17 wallclock secs (17.08 usr +  0.08 sys = 17.16 CPU) @  2
+.91/s
      Perl: 25 wallclock secs (24.48 usr +  0.08 sys = 24.56 CPU) @  2
+.04/s
     Perl2: 24 wallclock secs (23.36 usr +  0.14 sys = 23.50 CPU) @  2
+.13/s

          Rate    Perl   Perl2  Inline Ovidian
Perl    2.04/s      --     -4%    -24%    -30%
Perl2   2.13/s      5%      --    -20%    -27%
Inline  2.67/s     31%     25%      --     -8%
Ovidian 2.91/s     43%     37%      9%      --

[download]
However, I wouldn't put this in production code for a 5% saving. I would probably use split and unpack for clarity.

--
John.

In reply to Re: The Ovidian Transform by jmcnamara
in thread The Ovidian Transform by Ovid

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