ironically, the speed of passing arguments into functions is unaffected. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $arraylength=1000;

open(FOUT,">", "/dev/null");
my $now=time();

for (my $j=0; $j<100_000; ++$j) {

  # create a 1000 array
  my @array;
  for (my $i=0; $i<$arraylength; ++$i) { push(@array, rand()); }

  passed_array(\@array);
  sub passed_array {  print FOUT $_[0]->[rand($arraylength)]; }

}
print "Time: ".(time()-$now)." seconds\n";
close(FOUT);

[download]
this takes about 38 seconds, regardless of whether the array is passed by reference or by itself.

In reply to Re: Speed of Array Returns by iaw4
in thread Speed of Array Returns by Anonymous Monk

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