I'm using CGI.pm to write a CGI script and out of necessity, I have to do a lot of printing and I'm unsure of the best way to write it from a efficiency or style standpoint.

I ran a benchmark (output to the console, not to a browser) using this code:

use Benchmark qw/cmpthese/;
use CGI;
our $cgi = new CGI;

cmpthese 5000,{
per_line => <<'EOFCODE',
# Loop 10,000 times at 1 output per loop for a total of 
# 10,000 outputs.
for (my $i = 0, $i == 10000, $i++){
    print $cgi->p('This is a test.');
}
EOFCODE
# The following l
concat => <<'EOFCODE',
# Loop 1,000 times at 10 outputs per loop for a total of 
# 10,000 outputs.
for (my $i = 0, $i == 1000, $i++){
    print $cgi->p('This is a test.').$cgi->p('This is a test.').
        $cgi->p('This is a test.').$cgi->p('This is a test.').
        $cgi->p('This is a test.').$cgi->p('This is a test.').
        $cgi->p('This is a test.').$cgi->p('This is a test.').
        $cgi->p('This is a test.').$cgi->p('This is a test.');
}
EOFCODE
comma => <<'EOFCODE',
# Loop 1,000 times at 10 outputs per loop for a total of 
# 10,000 outputs.
for (my $i = 0, $i == 1000, $i++){
    print $cgi->p('This is a test.'), $cgi->p('This is a test.'), 
        $cgi->p('This is a test.'), $cgi->p('This is a test.'), 
        $cgi->p('This is a test.'), $cgi->p('This is a test.'), 
        $cgi->p('This is a test.'), $cgi->p('This is a test.'), 
        $cgi->p('This is a test.'), $cgi->p('This is a test.');
}
EOFCODE
};

[download]

And got these results:

           Rate   concat    comma per_line
concat    747/s       --      -0%     -88%
comma     749/s       0%       --     -88%
per_line 6098/s     716%     715%       --

[download]

It would seem, from this, that printing one line at a time is clearly most efficient, even though it had to loop through 10x more times. However, I don't know if that is conclusive, or if code efficency alone should dictate the style the program is written in.

I have come for guidance: should I make each of my print statements its own line, should I join them with commas, or should I concatenate them as strings? I'm also willing to accept that it doesn't really matter at all. Thanks in advance.

In reply to Proper way to print a large number of strings by jpfarmer

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