Your benchmark is sound, but look at what it revealed... sure, you can save 1.5 microseconds by dropping the word "scalar", but even if you executed that one million times, that's still less than two seconds of time, and if it helps a programmer figure out what the code is doing to save those two seconds, you're still ahead.

Use what's clear. Do not prematurely optimize. Let your default be to optimize for programmer understanding.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

In reply to •Re: Timing of Array-Size Determination Methods by merlyn
in thread Timing of Array-Size Determination Methods by Itatsumaki

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