The performance gain from the constant pragma is never going to tip the balance in a real world application
One optimization alone is never going to tip the balance. but imagine how slow perl scripts would be if *everybody* thought like that.
i use a constant to switch on and off debugging in one of my modules, and i compared it to a normal variable, and the difference was big enough for me to use a constant. and as i'm doing benchmarks quite regularly i think i can estimate that.
i'm so tired of all the people saying "don't optimize prematurely" while i have to use several awfully slow tools at work. and slow forums like this one. yes, don't optimize too early, but do it at least at *some* point.
i just don't see why using a constant would be bad at all. trading speed for maintainability is usually not worth it, but what's wrong with a constant. just learn what you have to do if you use it as a hash key and in strings, and that's it.

In reply to Re^2: On quoting the lhs of '=>' by tinita
in thread On quoting the lhs of '=>' by rovf

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