Update: I'm now saving the values for more realism, and corrected the extra 's' BrowserUK mentioned (which I had already fixed in the .pl file, just not in the post).

Some concrete numbers:

use Benchmark ();

sub argless   { $a    cmp $b    }
sub proto($$) { $_[0] cmp $_[1] }
sub args      { $_[0] cmp $_[1] }

my @array = qw(
   Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic Lice
+nse or the
   GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source
+ kit.
);

Benchmark::cmpthese(0, {
   inline     => sub { my @sorted = sort { $a cmp $b }     @array; },
   argless    => sub { my @sorted = sort argless           @array; },
   proto      => sub { my @sorted = sort proto             @array; },
   args       => sub { my @sorted = sort { args($a, $b) }  @array; },
});

__END__
           Rate    args   proto argless  inline
args     4634/s      --    -57%    -63%    -81%
proto   10735/s    132%      --    -14%    -57%
argless 12462/s    169%     16%      --    -50%
inline  24920/s    438%    132%    100%      --

[download]

Here's a different comparison: (One that yeilds less unfair optimization)

use Benchmark ();

sub argless   { $hash{$a   } cmp $hash{$b   } }
sub proto($$) { $hash{$_[0]} cmp $hash{$_[1]} }
sub args      { $hash{$_[0]} cmp $hash{$_[1]} }

our %hash = map { (''.rand()) => $_ } qw(
   Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic Lice
+nse or the
   GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source
+ kit.
);

Benchmark::cmpthese(0, {
   inline     => sub { my @sorted = sort { $hash{$a} cmp $hash{$b} } k
+eys %hash; },
   argless    => sub { my @sorted = sort argless                     k
+eys %hash; },
   proto      => sub { my @sorted = sort proto                       k
+eys %hash; },
   args       => sub { my @sorted = sort { args($a, $b) }            k
+eys %hash; },
});

__END__
          Rate    args   proto argless  inline
args    2832/s      --    -33%    -42%    -43%
proto   4258/s     50%      --    -13%    -14%
argless 4871/s     72%     14%      --     -2%
inline  4973/s     76%     17%      2%      --

[download]

Active Perl 5.6.1

In reply to Re^2: sort routines crossing package lines by ikegami
in thread sort routines crossing package lines by DrWhy

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