Ah, hello everyone.

Hypothetical situation: I have a large number of smallish text files (~30-40k) to search for a string. Because of their small size, it should be OK to create a loop where a file is slurped up into a variable, searched, then move on to the next file. Easy. Here's the question: Let's say there are A LOT of small files, so read-in efficiency becomes important. Is there any significant performance difference between the following slurping methods?: 
# METHOD A: read file into array:
@fileContents = <TEXTFILE>;
...and... 
# METHOD B: read file into string
local $/ = undef;
$fileContents = <TEXTFILE>;
Consider that once the file is read, I've got to search for multiple strings either by looping through array (Method A) or search one very LONG string (Method B). As you would expect, any and all help will be appreciated.

Alan "Hot Pastrami" Bellows
-Sitting calmly with scissors-

In reply to File slurping efficiency by Hot Pastrami

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