Hello great monks!

I have a design problem, which ought to be simple but is confounding me. I have a package containing a variety of functions to help me deal with my data, which is in large arrays. I am having troubles abstracting a change to my code. Currently I have:

sub processA {
    # common stuff
    # special stuff
    }
sub processB {
    loop (1..1000) {
         # common stuff
         # special stuff
         }
    }

[download]

I want to make this into something more modularized for a variety of reasons, so I was considering something like this:

sub processA {
    common_stuff($);
    # special stuff
    }
sub processB {
    loop (1..1000) {
         common_stuff($);
         # special stuff
         }
    }
sub common_stuff {
    # common stuff
    }

[download]

Pretty straight-forward, I guess. The problem is that as it stands now, the repeated code section (#common stuff) constructs a large array, then manipulates it. With my proposed modification, I would be creating this array for every iteration of the loop in processB. That isn't acceptable from a performance stand-point. So, I want something that may not be possible (or that may be, and I just don't know the term for it!):

Basically I want some way to create a large array in a sub-routine, keep it around as long as I need, and then to get rid of it. And preferrably I'd still want to keep this all in a single package.

Am I dreaming, or misguided, or naive, or lost? :)

In reply to Design Question by Anonymous Monk

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