This is basically the code I'm talking about. Looping through a number of files, reading them (this routine is quick), and looping through all parameter names in each file, checking if they already exists in the global @names array and take action depending on the result. It is this check (find_element) that I want to speed up. Any ideas? If hash is a good alternative, could you please explain the difference compared to an array? New at perl so I'm not so familiar with all expressions... Thank you! 
    foreach $filename (@input_names) #Go through input files
    {
        
        ($names_ref,$data_ref) = &read_file($filename);
        @tmp_names = @$names_ref;
        @tmp_data = @$data_ref;

        foreach $name (@tmp_names) #Go through lines of current input 
+file
        {
            $index = &find_element($name, @names); #Check if variable 
+is already present in name array (time consuming!)
            if ($index==-1) #Name not present, put both name and data 
+in array
            {
                push(@names,$name);
                push(@data,$tmp_data[$tmp_index]);
            }
            else #Name present, only replace data for the name
            {
                $data[$index] = $tmp_data[$tmp_index];    
            }
            $tmp_index++;
        }

    }

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In reply to Re^2: Speeding up perl script by samuelalfred
in thread Speeding up perl script by samuelalfred

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