actually, perl seemed smart enough to recognize that if it sees a call with an array, it can pass the array as a pointer. when I tried it, call(@longarray) and call(\@longarray) took almost the same amount of time. so, I do not believe perl literally puts all 1,000 elements of longarray on the stack and then pops it, as C would do.

the mystery to me was why perl was not smart enough to do the same when I do return @longarray.

apparently, this has to do with arrays vs. lists. I do understand now that the two are different. alas, I do not understand what the purpose of a list is. it doesn't seem to make things faster, and is more restrictive. besides, the difference is confusing. if sub's returned arrays, then they could easily be assigned back to arrays, no matter how long.

thanks everyone, though.

In reply to Re^3: Speed of Array Returns by iaw4
in thread Speed of Array Returns by Anonymous Monk

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