Given that the SSI directives could appear quite a few times in a single document, under heavy traffic loads would it be better to execute a single call that would process an entire HTML page using regular epressions to insert the affiliate code in all the right places or to go ahead and let the simple insertion script be run multiple times per page load?

There's a third option that's close in spirit to your first choice: Instead of using regular expressions to rewrite the HTML, usage a templating mechanism (e.g., HTML::Template).

Your second scheme starts a process per SSI insertion. Under load, this'll kill you.

Don't be concerned that the page you're building is 40K or so. That's peanuts compared with the overhead launching several process.

---

---

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.